The bitter end of the 24h Nurburgring for Max Verstappen
The long-awaited victory ultimately slipped away, mainly due to a technical problem that forced the mechanics to work for more than an hour on the rear axle of Mercedes-AMG GT3 number 3 of Max Verstappen. Until the drive shaft broke, which forced his teammate Daniel Juncadella to park in the garage just over three hours from the end while comfortably leading the race, the only real threat came from the twin Mercedes, number 80, also managed by the Winward team (the same that worked on Super Max’s #3) and driven on track by Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller, and Maxime Martin.
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Maro Engel and the honor of arms
It is undeniable, however, that Engel was one of the great protagonists of the challenge, also and especially thanks to the night battle against Max Verstappen, when the two Mercedes began their dance with aggressive entries and hysterical flashing to the lapped crews of the slower categories. Not without, moreover, a moment of great tension, with the almost door-to-door at the end of the legendary long Dottinger Hohe straight, with Engel forced to abort the counter-overtaking attempt on the four-time F1 world champion on the grass.
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Moves on the edge that, however, did not annoy Maro Engel. On the contrary, the strong German driver, after crossing the finish line first winning the 24h of Nurburgring for the second time in his career (the first, ten years ago, in 2016 with the Mercedes SLS of the Black Falcon team), amusingly told the microphones of GPBlog about the long battle with Max Verstappen: “I have to say I really enjoyed fighting against him. It was super fun to see him push to the limit with the Mercedes looking for the limits during the night, and I think it was the same for him. It’s special to see a driver like Max come to race here and obviously he did an amazing job. While I was in the car, battling with him, I was smiling to myself. It was really fun”.
Special moments
“It’s incredible – adds Engel – also to see that last year there were 280,000 spectators while in this edition they exceeded 350,000. I believe that in large part it’s thanks to Verstappen. Obviously, he helped to place this race even more on the world motorsport map, and we surely owe him gratitude for this. His driving, then, is always fantastic and surely we in the car had more fun than the team guys, who were a bit more tense and I think they appreciated the fact that afterwards we calmed down a bit. But obviously when you’re behind the wheel… well, these are the moments you live for when you’re a driver. At night, then, it’s an extraordinary experience, something special”. Especially against someone like Max Verstappen…
