The time has come: The 24-hour race at the Nürburgring 2024 begins tomorrow. The race start for the 52nd edition of the Eifel classic will take place on Saturday, June 1, 2024, at 4:00 p.m. Before that, there will be a warm-up session from 12:40 p.m. to 1:25 p.m., after which the 130 cars will line up on the starting grid from 2:45 p.m.
After the numerous qualifying sessions since Thursday and the top qualifying this Friday evening, the starting grid for the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring 2024 has been set. After the pole lap of the 22-year-old factory driver Max Hesse in the #72 RMG-BMW, BMW will start from first place for the 16th time in the endurance classic on the Nordschleife – a lonely record. The #911 Grello-Porsche from Manthey Racing will also be joining them on the first row.
24h Nürburgring: RMG-BMW dominates on the Nordschleife
The pole position of the only RMG BMW in the top SP9 class had already become apparent over the past few days. On Thursday, the starting number 72 had already set the best time of the day, and in Qualifying 3 on Friday afternoon, the BMW M4 GT3 of the trio Harper/Hesse/Weerts was also at the top.
Max Hesse’s final pole time of 8:10.992 minutes was slower than Nicolas Varrone’s best time from Top Qualifying 2, but was still enough to secure pole position with a lead of 0.406 seconds over Manthey Porsche driver Laurens Vanthoor.
Only eight thousandths of a second behind Vanthoor secured Ricardo Feller took third place in his #16 Scherer Audi at the start this afternoon. The top five were completed by Kelvin van der Linde (#27 Abt-Lamborghini) and Christopher Haase in the second Scherer Audi with starting number 15. A remarkable overall result for the Scherer team, which has to make do without Audi factory support this year.
Team boss Christian Scherer was nevertheless optimistic about the racing team from Meuspath’s chances of victory even before the top qualifying, as you can read here:
24h Nürburgring: bankruptcy for Mercedes and Aston Martin
Defending champion Frikadelli Racing finds itself directly outside the top five with the only Ferrari 296 GT3 in the field. The team around Klaus Abbelen ultimately missed pole position by 1.164 seconds in Top Qualifying 2.
Mercedes-AMG was a bit of a disappointment. Although the Affalterbach-based company has the strongest line-up in the SP9 class with six Mercedes-AMG GT3s, together with Porsche, Fabian Schiller only managed eighth place in the best-placed ‘Stern’ with starting number 130 from GetSpeed-Mercedes (Engel/Gounon/Schiller/Christodoulou).
Things went even less well for Aston Martin. The British brand was the only GT3 manufacturer in the field to miss the top 10. The first Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo will only be found on the starting grid in 16th place in the form of the #35 Walkenhorst-Aston-Martin (Hull/Mazatis/Assenheimer/Ortmann).
24h Nürburgring 2024: Starting grid (SP9 & SP-X)
| Starting point | automobile | driver |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | #72 RMG BMW | Harper/Hesse/Weerts |
| 2 | #911 Manthey Porsche | L. Vanthoor/Preining/Estre/Güven |
| 3 | #16 Scherer Audi | Stippler/Mies/Feller/Marschall |
| 4 | #27 Abt Lamborghini | K. van der Linde/Mapelli/Pepper |
| 5 | #15 Scherer Audi | Vervisch/Haase/Winkelhock/Feller |
| 6 | #1 Frikadelli Ferrari | Laser/Keilwitz/Ludwig/Varrone |
| 7 | #99 Rowe-BMW | Frijns/S. van der Linde/D. Vanthoor/Farfus |
| 8th | #130 GetSpeed Mercedes | Engel/Gounon/Schiller/Christodoulou |
| 9 | #4 HRT Mercedes | Stolz/Götz/Juncadella/Maini |
| 10 | #33 Falken Porsche | Andlauer/Bachler/Müller/Picariello |
| 11 | #3 HRT Mercedes | Beretta/Bird/J. Owega/Maini |
| 12 | #24 Lionspeed Porsche | Au/Niederhauser/Kolb/Dontje |
| 13 | #6 HRT Mercedes | Fetzer/Haupt/Aron/S. Owega |
| 14 | #44 Falken Porsche | Heinemann/Eriksson/Menzel/Ragginger |
| 15 | #5 Renauer Porsche | Renauer/Kolb/Olsen/Campbell |
| 16 | #35 Walkenhorst-Aston-Martin | Hull/Mazatis/Assenheimer |
| 17 | #71 Juta Audi | Veremenko/Selv/Kaffer/Erhart |
| 18 | #8 GetSpeed Mercedes | Auer/Christodoulou/Ellis/Grenier |
| 19 | #34 Walkenhorst-Aston-Martin | Krognes/Giermaziak/Pittard/Thiim |
| 20 | #17 PROsport Aston Martin | Böckmann/Bastian/Sasse |
| 21 | #98 Rowe-BMW | Marciello/Martin/Wittmann/Farfus |
| 22 | #11 Schnitzelalm Mercedes | Marchewicz/Härtling/Heyer |
| 23 | #54 Dinamic Porsche | Holzer/Seefried/Buus/Dienst |
| 24 | #7 Konrad Lamborghini | Soufi/Kratz/Paul/Caresani |
| 25 | #36 Walkenhorst-Aston-Martin | Walkenhorst/Aust/Bollrath/Buchardt |
| 26 | #60 Hankook Cup Porsche SP-X | Bruins/Cho/Kim |
| 27 | #706 Glickenhaus SP-X | Mutsch/Mailleux/Arnold/Ledogar |