Max Verstappen's build-up to his maiden start in the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring took a brutal hit on Saturday, April 19, when a broken front splitter robbed his Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing entry of a commanding victory in the second 24h Qualifier race at the Nordschleife.
Running the #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO shared with Austrian DTM front-runner Lucas Auer and Spanish endurance specialist Daniel Juncadella, Verstappen had been at the front throughout the opening stint, pulling out a 30-second gap over the field after roughly 90 minutes of racing.
Then the splitter gave way. The team was forced to bring the car in for an unscheduled pit stop, and the repair took approximately 25 minutes — an eternity on a circuit where a single lap takes little more than eight. By the time the car returned to the action any realistic hope of victory had evaporated.
Victory instead went to the #16 Scherer Sport PHX Audi R8 LMS GT3, with the #84 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 second and the factory Manthey EMA #911 Porsche 911 GT3 R completing the podium. For Verstappen it was a bittersweet dress rehearsal — the raw pace was undeniable, but the mechanical gremlin exposed the brutal reality that the Nordschleife punishes anything less than perfect preparation.
The four-time Formula 1 world champion has spent the past 18 months steadily building a GT3 CV away from his Red Bull Racing day job. He claimed his first GT3 race win with Emil Frey Racing's Ferrari 296 GT3 in September 2025 while racing incognito under the pseudonym "Franz Hermann", and has steadily banked NLS endurance laps on the 20.8-kilometre Nordschleife to earn the all-important Nordschleife A-Permit required to start the full 24-hour event.
Verstappen has also invested on the commercial side. In 2026 he launched his own Verstappen Racing GT programme in partnership with 2 Seas Motorsport, running Aston Martin machinery in the GT World Challenge Europe series — though for the Green Hell he has chosen to race as part of the Mercedes-AMG factory effort, where Auer and Juncadella provide a ready-made line-up of experienced hands.
The second Qualifier race is the last competitive session before the main event on June 18-21. Organisers and teams typically use the weekend to shake down the cars in race trim, and Verstappen and Auer were doing exactly that before the front-end damage changed the equation. The pace — a 30-second cushion after 10 laps — will give the team every reason to believe they arrive at the 24-hour proper as a legitimate overall contender.
The Red Bull Ring Formula 1 round at the end of June sits two weeks after the Nurburgring 24 Hours weekend, and Red Bull Racing has already cleared Verstappen's diary to attempt the endurance classic. His Mercedes-AMG rivals will hope the splitter problem was an isolated one. The evidence from Saturday suggests Verstappen arrives at the Green Hell not as a celebrity guest, but as a genuine threat to overall honours.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/verstappen-nurburgring-24h-qualifier-broken-splitter-mercedes-amg-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
