2025 Nürburgring 24 Hours

Sadness and Joy at the Green Hell

Manthey Racing’s neon “Grello” Porsche 911 GT3 R leads the pack into the Green Hell as 280,000 roaring fans look on. It’s the 53rd ADAC Nürburgring 24 Hours, and your intrepid reporter is running on equal parts adrenaline and Hefeweizen. The Eifel mountains are alive with noise, engines screaming, fans singing, fireworks popping. Little did we know the next 24 hours (give or take a red-flag timeout) would deliver one of the wildest, weirdest races in Nürburgring history.

High Noon, High Hopes, High Octane Start

It all kicked off under a blazing Saturday sun, midsummer in the Eifel with temperatures pushing 30 °C. The “Grello”, Manthey’s famous green-and-yellow Porsche piloted by Kévin Estre, blasted from pole and immediately seized an early lead. With trackside campers already downing their breakfast beers, Estre streaked away like a man possessed. Chasing in his wake, Augusto Farfus in the lone ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 started carving through traffic like a hot knife through schwenkbraten, gaining seven positions on the opening lap. The stage was set: Porsche vs. BMW, Grello vs. the Bavarian beast.

The first hours weren’t without collateral damage. The #33 Falken Motorsports Porsche, a front-row starter, met a cruel fate before nightfall, spearing a spun Cup car head-on at Turn 2 and retiring in a crumpled heap. The defending champion #1 Audi from Scherer Sport also limped out early with damage. By sunset, Kelvin van der Linde had the #98 BMW up to third, and most other factory contenders (Falken, Phoenix Audi, GetSpeed AMG) were either busted or hobbled. The race narrowed into a heavyweight duel far sooner than anyone expected.

But just as the Grello Porsche thundered past the grandstands to commence its domination, reality flickered; literally.

Lights Out: Red Flag and Blackout Chaos

The unthinkable happened one hour and change into the race: the power went out in the pit lane. At first, I thought I’d blown a fuse in my brain from too much caffeine and trackside currywurst. But no, the pits were in darkness, timing screens dead, fuel pumps silent. In over 50 years of this race, we’ve seen apocalyptic rain, fog, hailstorms, but never a full-blown electrical blackout. “In the history of the 24h interruptions, this is certainly the most curious reason,” the official live ticker marvelled. Race control had no choice: red flag.

For 2 hours and 15 minutes, the Nürburgring hit the pause button. Mechanics and drivers milled about in confusion; fans cracked open more beers and played impromptu football on the campground roads. The culprit? Not a thunderbolt from Zeus, but a faulty cooling system in the paddock that overheated and tripped the circuit breakers. Essentially, the air conditioning demanded too much AC power in the summer heat, knocking out the grid. “We’ve had hail and storms, but not something like this yet. It was the only right decision to show the red flag,” remarked Hans-Peter Naundorf, ROWE’s team boss. You can’t make this stuff up; the Green Hell finds new ways to bite.

By 19:45 local time, engineers had bypassed the rogue cooler, and engines re-fired. The race resumed behind the safety car with the #911 Manthey Porsche still leading the reset field. One quirk of the restart: the #45 Kondo Racing Ferrari, which had briefly inherited P1 during the first pit cycle, got shuffled back to fourth due to timing countback. Tough break for the prancing horse, their moment in the sun lasted just long enough to snap a photo. As the green flag waved again, a carnival cheer rose from the grandstands. Lights on, game on (round two)!

Nightfall: Mayhem, Legends and a Logan’s Run

Night at the Nürburgring 24h is a hallucinatory experience. I wandered through the infield at 3:00 AM, dodging barbecues and over-enthusiastic drunks, the forest lit by campfires and the occasional rogue firework. On track, the survival lottery continued. The #34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin, which had impressively charged into contention with Nicki Thiim at the wheel, suddenly expired around 5:45 AM with an engine failure. The howls of heartbreak from Aston fans were drowned by the full-throttle symphony of others carrying on. Meanwhile, the #17 GetSpeed Mercedes hit trouble and spent ages in the garage with a busted shock absorber. The Grello Porsche ran like clockwork through the darkness; Estre, Ayhancan Güven, and Thomas Preining clicked off laps like a sprint race, stretching a lead of over two minutes by the halfway mark.

Not every hero in this race drives a GT3 missile. A fan-favourite entry, the plucky Dacia Logan #300, was stealing hearts at the back of the pack. This humble little sedan, fielded by MSC Wahlscheid/Olli’s Garage, has attained cult status as the spiritual successor to the old “foxtail” Opel Manta in Nürburgring lore. Marshals and fans rallied to help the privateer team make the grid this year (marshals literally pooled cash to pay for the car’s fuel deposit after a sponsor bailed). Every time the Logan puttered by, the campsites roared in approval, proving that being slow can make you a superstar in this race.

Then, as dawn broke, the Green Hell demanded its tribute. In the early morning hours, a massive shunt brought the Nürburgring to a standstill: the beloved Dacia Logan collided violently with the #74 PROsport Aston Martin GT4 at the fast Flugplatz section. In an instant, the Logan’s brave run was over, the car mangled, the dream ended. Both drivers escaped serious injury (the Logan’s cage doing its job), but the incident was spectacular and shocking. A prolonged Code 60 slow zone ensued as crews cleaned up the debris of both cars. In the campsites, a mournful silence fell. Our cult underdog had vanished into the mist, feeding the growing fan lore around the Dacia. “The biggest tragedy of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring… no wonder they call it the Green Hell,” one fan lamented online. By midday, rumours of the Logan’s fate spread like ghost stories, another chapter in the legend of the little car that could (until it couldn’t). Rest in peace, Logan; we’ll pour one out for you at Brünnchen.

The Morning Grind: Grello on a Knife Edge

Sunday morning, 17-18 hours in, and the race for overall victory had distilled to pure, unblinking intensity. The #911 Manthey EMA Porsche (“Grello”) still led, but the #98 ROWE BMW was looming ever larger in its mirrors. Raffaele Marciello woke up with a mission, hammering the BMW around the Nordschleife in a ferocious stint that began reeling the Porsche back in. Yours truly nearly spilt my coffee as Marciello flew by the pit wall, V8 bellowing, visibly on the limit. He cut the deficit from minutes to seconds, smelling blood, sweat, and Michelin rubber. “The car feels great and we’re in the fight for overall victory,” Marciello said earlier, noting how he traded fast laps with Estre. The tension was palpable: one slip-up by the Porsche, and the chasing BMW would pounce.

And then, a slip-up came, a big one. Shortly after 10:00 AM, drama struck at a high-speed section near Kallenhard. Estre dove inside at the wrong moment, misjudging the overtake, pushing to stay ahead of Marciello’s charging BMW, caught up to a backmarker: the #179 Dörr Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT4. Misjudging the overtake, Estre dived inside at the wrong moment, the Porsche’s nose tagging the Aston and sending it careening into the guardrail and onto its roof. A collective gasp went up around the circuit as the Aston rolled upside-down, debris flying. Marciello, right on their tail, somehow squeaked past the chaos by inches. “There’s not really much to say about the incident… the case is clear to me,” Marciello observed, noting he’d “already been penalised for less than 30 seconds,” and fully expected the Manthey Porsche to get a hefty penalty. Race control agreed. After a lengthy review, they dropped the hammer: a 100-second time penalty (1 minute 40 seconds) against the #911 for causing the collision. Estre’s aggressive lunge had come back to bite, and the proverbial wheels were now coming off Grello’s victory bid.

However, Manthey wasn’t about to roll over like that Aston did. The team announced it would appeal the penalty, meaning they wouldn’t serve it in the pits. Instead, Estre and Co. chose to press on at full tilt, hoping to build enough gap, or praying for a miracle from the stewards. This set up a bizarre situation for the final hours: the #911 Porsche still led on the road, but hung under a Damoclean sword of 100 ticking seconds to be added after the flag. As a fan, it was nail-biting and a bit absurd. As a reporter, it was pure gold. I jotted in my notebook: “Grello leads, but only technically; BMW effectively in front if penalty holds. Motorsport by Kafka?”

Final Hours Showdown: 24h to 25h (Who’s Counting?)

With about three hours remaining, the ROWE BMW and Manthey Porsche were in a dead heat, trading the lead with pit stops and Code 60 slow zones playing a high-speed chess match. Augusto Farfus took the wheel of the BMW and made the move of the race down the Dottinger Hohe straight, slipstreaming past Ayhancan Güven’s Porsche at over 280 km/h to grab the lead. For the first time since Lap 21, the Grello had been passed on pure pace. The crowd along the straight erupted (yes, even some Porsche fans had to applaud that gutsy pass). Farfus whooshed by, likely grinning ear-to-ear under his helmet, just as Kelvin van der Linde climbed in to take the BMW’s final stint.

Manthey struck back at the last round of pit stops, a quick splash and dash for Estre allowed the #911 to leapfrog ahead of the BMW one more time on track. And so it came to this: Kevin Estre vs. Kelvin van der Linde in the final stint, a duel of the Kevins (one French, one South African) charging through traffic, nose to tail, after nearly 24 hours. The Grello Porsche held a slim 20-second lead on the road, with Estre wringing its neck to keep the younger Van der Linde at bay. The atmosphere was insane, with 280,000 fans on their feet and many lining the fences for the last laps. I stood on the pit balcony, heart pounding, utterly torn: the romantic in me wanted that fluorescent Grello to complete its heroic almost-flag-to-flag run; the pragmatist knew the penalty would snatch it away anyway unless something changed.

At 4:00 PM Sunday, the checkered flag waved. Estre blasted across the line first, the exhausted Porsche still ahead by mere seconds, a testament to a phenomenal drive that saw the car lead 133 of 141 laps. Fireworks and air horns celebrated a finish that was dramatic to the last. But there was no triumphant cheer in the Manthey camp, only resigned silence. Minutes before the flag, word came down: Manthey’s protest was denied; the penalty stood. The ROWE Racing BMW crew erupted in jubilation as it dawned that they had truly won. Once 100 penalty seconds were added to the Porsche’s time, the #98 BMW was elevated to victory by 1 minute 17.8 seconds on the official timing. The Bavarian machine hadn’t led the most laps, but it led the ones that counted after all the maths was done.

ROWE BMW wins the 2025 Nürburgring 24! A record 21st overall win for BMW in this race, and a second N24 title for the ROWE squad after 2020. The driver lineup of Farfus (Brazil), Jesse Krohn (Finland), Marciello (Switzerland), and van der Linde (South Africa) was a veritable UN of GT talent, each delivering when it mattered. For Kelvin van der Linde, it’s a third N24 crown (nice birthday present, having just turned 29). Farfus adds a second win to his résumé 15 years after his first. And for Marciello and Krohn, it’s the sweetest of firsts. As Hans-Peter Naundorf put it, “Today, it wasn’t the fastest car that won, but the team that made the fewest mistakes. That was us, and we are proud of that.” Perhaps it's a bit of a humblebrag, but he’s not wrong; the BMW crew kept their nose clean while Grello’s crew racked up one mistake too many.

The final classification saw the penalised Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R classified second. Third place went to the #54 Dinamic Motorsport Porsche, an unfancied privateer entry that ran a flawlessly clean race, their reward being a podium finish alongside the factory titans. Fourth was the #28 ABT Sportsline Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2, which had been in podium contention until a late brake change dropped them back (they clawed back P4 on the very last lap, salvaging the best-ever Lambo result here). Rounding out the top five, in a storybook result, was the #65 HRT Ford Mustang GT3; yes, a Ford!, claiming the SP9 Pro/Am class win and proving that the new Mustang GT3 is both fast and durable on its Nürburgring debut. In a race notorious for attrition, simply finishing is an achievement; finishing fifth overall in your first outing is cause to crack open some champagne and some American beer for contrast.

Plenty of heavy hitters never saw Sunday afternoon. Both Falken Porsches were out, the #33 in that freak early shunt, the #44 with a midnight puncture and mechanical woes. The Scherer PHX Audi R8 (last year’s winner) retired after an oil spill incident and a monster 4.5-minute penalty for ignoring flags (yes, four and a half minutes, a brutal combo penalty that had even stoners on the couch laughing at the absurdity of a car parked in the penalty box that long). Both GetSpeed Mercedes-AMGs suffered terminal issues by morning. The Green Hell did not discriminate; it devoured prototypes and underdogs alike. And yet, remarkably, despite the carnage, every driver walked away largely uninjured. Perhaps that’s the biggest victory of all.

As I stumble out of the press room, ears still ringing from the roar of engines and crowd, I reflect on what we just witnessed. This 24h had everything: a bizarre mid-race blackout, ferocious duels, heartwarming underdog stories, heartbreaking crashes, controversial penalties and a finish decided in the steward’s office. Over a quarter-million spectators kept the faith through it all, turning the Nürburgring into its own city of passion for one sleepless summer night. The weather stayed miraculously dry throughout, the first time in decades we had zero rain to spice the stew, but the race found other ways to be absolutely batshit crazy.

I must confess: I’m utterly spent and slightly buzzed, and I loved every minute. The 2025 Nürburgring 24 Hours will go down as an instant classic, a “hot Eifel thriller” to quote the organisers. To the fans who were here, no explanation is needed; to those who weren’t, no explanation is possible. As we packed up, I noticed a group of sunburnt, smiling fans at the fence, toasting the podium cars with funnel-cake schnapps. One wears a shirt reading “Spirit of the Manta”, holding up a plush fox tail. Next to him, another waves a Dacia logo flag with the slogan “Never Logoff, Logan”. The torch of Nürburgring folklore passes on, legends new and old. This is endurance racing at the Green Hell, chaotic, unpredictable, and utterly glorious. And as long as they keep running it, we’ll keep coming back for more punishment, powered by excitement and perhaps a dash of madness. See you next year, same time, same place, bring earplugs and a sense of humour.

RACE RESULTS