24h Nurburgring, the report of Q1 and Q2
A typical day, as typical as it gets at least from a weather point of view, greeted Thursday the start of operations at the 24 Hours of Nurburgring. The best time between Q1 and Q2 – but for the crews of the SP9 class (the one with the most performing GT3 cars and professional drivers) these were only free practice sessions where grid positions were not at stake – went to the Mercedes-AMG GT3 number 80, in the hands of Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller and Maxime Martin. “Only” third instead was Max Verstappen, behind also the Bmw M4 number 1 of the reigning champion team Rowe which fields Jordan Pepper, Augusto Farfus, Raffaele Marciello and Kelvin Van Der Linde.
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The best times were however set in Q1, in the daytime session held with slightly more stable weather conditions, while in Q2 of three and a half hours in the evening there was little running due to the heavy rain which at times flooded the track, preventing the crews from improving the times of the first practice session. No big deal especially for the top teams, who will fight on Friday for the first 49 grid positions in the sessions called “Top Qualifying” 1, 2 and 3, which work by elimination exactly as in Formula 1.
The qualifying format: Max Verstappen’s team is immediately involved
With a small but substantial exception: the five crews that obtained the best results in 2026 have direct access to TQ3, thus avoiding “getting their hands dirty” already in the first elimination sessions. However, this is not the case for the Mercedes-AMG GT3 number 3 of the Verstappen.com Racing team: Max and company – Lucas Auer, Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon – have not achieved particularly notable results in previous outings this season at the Nurburgring Nordschleife (between disqualifications and retirements), and so they are forced to compete for the best time already in TQ1 and TQ2. With a warning: whoever drives in the first session is obliged to hand over the wheel to a teammate in the subsequent ones, and therefore Verstappen will have to choose carefully when to go out on track.
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The live streaming of the 24h Nurburgring qualifying
So it is another day of great spectacle at the Green Hell, with the sessions that will decide the starting grid: in addition to the three Top Qualifying for the first 49 positions on the grid, there is also Q3 scheduled to define the highest positions of the “rest of the group” fighting between 161st and 50th position. It starts at 10:15 with TQ1, while the fight for pole position in TQ3 will take place for one hour, from 13:35 to 14:35: here is the complete schedule with the times of all sessions.
The entire Friday of practice is then, as always, available live on the official 24h Nurburgring YouTube channel, with traditional streaming with English commentary and television direction, but also with several on-board channels from the cars. The usual advice is to stay on this article to enjoy simultaneously the classic “tv” live and the live footage from Max Verstappen’s Mercedes number 3.
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