Verstappen/Auer lose likely Nordschleife victory

Max Verstappen lost another likely Nurburgring Nordschleife victory, having charged from fifth to first before an issue grounded his Team Verstappen Mercedes in the garage on Sunday.

Following a minute's silence on the grid to mark the passing of Juha Miettinen on Saturday, the racing at the Nurburgring resumed on Sunday with Verstappen starting the car - team-mate Lucas Auer having qualified the entry fifth.

Verstappen wasted little time in progressing. He quickly claimed fourth as he took advantage of the #23 BMW going wide, driving around the outside of it out of Turn 2.

Next up, Verstappen breezed past the #911 Porsche in the hands of 2023 DTM champion Thomas Preining to move into third.

Verstappen took advantage of traffic to pull off a stunning move on the polesitting Ferrari, and he was into the lead within half an hour, passing the Audi of Christopher Haase, with whom Verstappen battled hard in his last Nurburgring outing (NLS2 in March), too.

Haase didn't let Verstappen bolt clear and kept on his tail - and briefly even ran alongside him - before Verstappen made his first pitstop at the end of lap five.

But once Haase pitted a lap later, Verstappen increased his lead to almost 30 seconds. He was going to lose some of that advantage later due to his shorter stint (pitstops have a minimum time based on stint length in NLS races), but Verstappen looked comfortable for victory.

However, that all went awry when Verstappen came in for his second pitstop and his team rolled his Mercedes back into the garage.

Verstappen hopped out and swapped places with Auer, but the car didn't go anywhere fast as his team frantically worked on apparent damage at the front end of the Mercedes.

This was reported to be a "front splitter defect" at the time, although the cause remains a mystery for now.

It nevertheless torpedoed Verstappen and Auer's chances of victory as Auer spent almost half an hour sitting in the garage. When Auer emerged from the garage, he was outside the top 80 and three laps down.

It continued a painful run of lost Nurburging victories in 2026 for Verstappen, having been disqualified from a comfortable NLS2 victory in March due to his team exceeding the tyre allowance.

Alexander Sims, having taken over the #16 Audi from Haase, picked up the lead with two of the four hours remaining.

That Scherer Sport-run car went on to win the race with Ben Green at the wheel, 28 seconds ahead of the Abt Lamborghini of Patric Niederhauser, Mirko Bortolotti and Luca Engstler.

The 2023 DTM champion Thomas Preining prevailed in a late-race scrap for third for Porsche squad Manthey.

He was compromised behind a GT4 car on the run onto the Dottinger Hohe and briefly lost the place to the Team Ravenol Mercedes of Fabian Schiller, but regained the position through the Tiergarten sequence, defended it on the grand prix loop and then consolidated his advantage thereafter.

Auer ended the race in 39th, still three laps down, having made one further visit to the pits.