Verstappen's team continues to lead at Nordschleife.

      Less than seven hours remain until the finish of the marathon on the "Northern Loop" of the Nürburgring, and the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Max Verstappen's team continues to lead. However, its advantage over the same car with the number 80 remains quite small, fluctuating between 7-12 seconds depending on the situation on the track.

      But these two crews have pulled away from the other participants in the 24-hour race by more than five minutes, and it doesn’t seem like any of the competitors are capable of catching up. However, the duel between the cars with numbers 3 and 80 seems set to continue. During the night period, they changed positions several times, and around the 11th hour of the race, an unpleasant incident occurred during Max's pit stop.

      After another pit stop, Max exited the pits four seconds behind Maro Engel, quickly caught up with the German driver, and after three laps launched an attack and successfully overtook him. However, Engel continued to stay closely behind him and at the beginning of the next hour of the race took decisive action, attempting to regain his position.

      Max did not want to give way, and contact occurred between the two Mercedes, resulting in Engel ending up on the grassy shoulder. Fortunately, as he is a very experienced endurance racing driver, he managed to avoid hitting the barriers, but of course, when he returned to the track, Verstappen was already several seconds ahead.

      Currently, the car of the Verstappen Racing team is being driven by Lukas Auer, who continues to gradually increase the lead over the Mercedes with the number 80, while the Aston Martin No. 34, driven by Norwegian Christian Krognæs, holds third position with almost a 6-minute gap. However, part of this gap can be explained by the fact that this car has a higher fuel consumption, so the crew had to refuel more often.

      Drivers in Mercedes cars have not won the "24 Hours of Nürburgring" for ten years, but there is a high probability that today the Stuttgart brand will manage to change that.