45 laps of racing on Saturday, a 14-hour break and, finally, five slow laps behind the safety car on Sunday: The 52nd edition of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring will go down in the history books of the Eifel classic not only as the shortest, but also as the most bizarre. For the first time, the race had to be ended prematurely.
The finish flag fell at 3:05 p.m. instead of 4:00 p.m. as planned, which would cause some discussion later. More on that later. After the 240,000 spectators had bravely waited in the rain and mud on the campsites since the beginning of the week, their enthusiasm was unsurprisingly rather limited given the proceedings.
24h Nürburgring: Bad news every hour
What started as a race turned into a waiting marathon. After the race was stopped at 11:22 p.m. due to fog, the first information was announced for a possible restart at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. Every half hour, the experienced race director Walter Hornung had to deliver one bad news after another: it was so foggy, especially around the Grand Prix track, that a restart under safe conditions was not possible.
At 9:30 a.m., the race management gave a glimmer of hope when all the remaining racing cars were to leave the garages and head to the starting grid. If the weather had improved, this would have significantly sped up the restart process. However, four agonizingly long hours would pass before the engines were finally started at 1:30 p.m. – even though the track was still shrouded in fog.
That’s why it started on Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
This timing was no coincidence, as numerous drivers had not yet completed their two mandatory race laps, meaning they had not even been in the car on Saturday until the race was stopped. This included Ricardo Feller, who was to spend his only laps at the wheel of the victorious #16 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo2 from Scherer Sport PHX behind the safety car or lead car. According to the regulations, teams must deregister their drivers at least two hours before the end of the race at 4 p.m. if it is foreseeable that they will not be able to complete the mandatory laps. Otherwise, they will be hit with penalties. This has happened frequently in the past.
So Hornung and Co. decided to resume behind the lead car and announce five formation laps to give all teams the opportunity to put their drivers in the cockpit with a view to their compulsory laps, so that they at least did not have to withdraw from the race. The 105 remaining cars from various classes set off on the slow journey, as did the race management in the hope of being able to start again under the green flag.
Nürburgring, or: 125 kilometers of creeping
However, this was not to happen during the five formation laps or over 125 kilometers of slow driving behind the safety car. After almost one and a half hours of slow driving, the race management announced at 2:49 p.m.: No restart! The fog was still too thick around the GP course and parts of the Nordschleife to ensure the necessary safety. “The spray is OK, except on the GP track and in the area of the airfield and Schwedenkreuz, where you can only really see the tail light of the vehicle in front,” radioed local hero Nico Menzel from his #44 Falken Porsche.
Why was the Nürburgring 24-hour race ended prematurely?
Many spectators along the track – some had probably left early because of the traffic chaos of the previous days – asked themselves afterwards: Why weren’t more formation laps simply added on, in the hope of experiencing a few more laps in racing trim at some point, instead of ending the race early?
A discussion to which there is probably no single true answer. Not even in the regulations. Hornung and his ‘weather scouts’ had no prospect of the conditions improving during the five miserably long formation laps. Before the restart, he had received information from a weather station that it would clear up around 2 p.m. But in vain. It was the third disappointment from the perspective of those responsible, who had already been predicted better prospects by weather information services at 8 a.m. and then again at 11 a.m.
No unnecessary safety risk in such conditions
The principle of ‘if only, if only, bicycle chain’ applies: theoretically, a sudden improvement in visibility would have been possible. And in fact, the fog had completely cleared around an hour after the premature end, which did not necessarily make the overall picture appear ‘sunnier’ for the visitors on site. In 2018, the race was reopened after an interruption for a 90-minute ‘sprint’. Back then, however, the conditions were clear at that time.
This was not the case with the fog banks this year. “We would have liked to have had a restart and fought it out on the track,” said debut winner Ricardo Feller, who was probably also OK with the premature end. “But it was too risky. I couldn’t see the marshals at times.” In such a situation, it would have been negligent to let the race go ahead.
In the past, it might have been handled this way – the first 24-hour interruption was in 1992, only 22 years after the premiere – but given today’s extremely high safety aspect, the fear of lawsuits in the event of a serious accident and, not least, the very fast GT3 cars in the field, it is understandable in retrospect not to take unnecessary risks.
In addition, there were still 13 GT3 cars on the lead lap and incidents in traffic would not have been a surprise given the enormous speeds. In an individual time trial, visibility might have been sufficient, but not if a driver cannot see a car in front of him that has crashed in time.
“Nobody wanted this on purpose”
The idea of only securing the foggy parts of the route with a permanent Code 60 or Code 120 phase also seems unrealistic: where do you start and where do you stop? The conditions could have worsened again, as they had in the morning. Such a ‘patchwork’ of clear and restricted areas would probably have been at least as dangerous as completely clear driving in poor visibility conditions.
Laurens Vanthoor from the second-placed #911 Manthey-Porsche actually summed it up: “Everyone would have liked to see a real 24-hour race. Nobody wanted that on purpose. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is. You can’t change the weather.”
Shortest 24-hour race with a long aftermath?
After all, at least at the ‘green table’, the 2024 Nürburgring 24-hour race could have a long aftermath. The BMW team Rowe Racing has announced that it will appeal against a protest that was rejected after the end of the race. The main issue is the rule question of whether the race was ‘finished’ or ‘abandoned’ instead.
“I would like to make it very clear that our decision to go to the DMSB Court of Appeal is not about us not being happy for other teams to be successful,” Rowe team boss Hans-Peter Naundorf was quoted as saying in a team press release on Monday evening. “We want the sometimes very complex regulations in our sport to be applied reliably and correctly and that all participants can rely on them. In our opinion, the race management did not end the race in accordance with the rules.”
In this article, we have examined in detail what the complex ‘Rowe Racing case’ is all about, using all the information available: