Max Verstappen enjoyed a steady start to his weekend at the Nurburgring 24 Hours by finishing third in the opening qualifying session, which was topped by the Winward Mercedes.
The four-time Formula 1 world champion set an 8m18.539s lap around the Nordschleife aboard the Mercedes-AMG GT3 he is sharing with Lucas Auer, Jules Gounon and Dani Juncadella.
This was 3.582s slower than the #80 Mercedes, shared by Maro Engel, Maxime Martin, Fabian Schiller and Luca Stolz, with Raffaele Marciello, Jordan Pepper, Kelvin van der Linde and Augusto Farfus aboard the #1 BMW splitting the pair.
But these lap times mean relatively little because it was effectively a practice outing for the leading cars, despite the session being called ‘Qualifying 1’, with ‘Qualifying 2’ later on Thursday.
That’s because Thursday’s running will determine grid spots 50 to 161 for Saturday’s race start, with Top Qualifying on Friday deciding overall pole and the positions that immediately follow.
So, Thursday’s opening outing was more about learnings and Verstappen built his way into the session by logging a nine-minute lap time when he was the first to head out in his Mercedes.
It was 25 minutes into the two-hour session that the leaderboard had its first lap time under nine minutes with Benjamin Leuchter setting an 8m54.259s in the Max Kruse Audi R8.
The Winward Mercedes topped the times on Thursday
The Winward Mercedes topped the times on Thursday
That was subsequently beaten by a host of other cars before the Verstappen Racing #3 Mercedes finally reached the top of the leaderboard with 55 minutes remaining.
The 8m18.539s was set by Verstappen himself and it went through much of the final hour unbeaten as precautionary yellow flags continued to interrupt proceedings.
But then Schiller logged an 8m14.957s to shoot Winward to the top of the standings with 26 minutes left, a minute before Marciello’s 8m18.069s put his BMW – winner of last year’s race – in second.
The Nurburgring then lived up to its reputation for unpredictable weather as rain impacted the final moments of the session, which had been dry up to then, meaning those lap times were unbeaten.
This resulted in Winward finishing fastest ahead of Rowe Racing BMW and Verstappen Racing in third. Fourth going to the sister Rowe BMW (Dan Harper, Max Hesse, Sheldon Van Der Linde and Dries Vanthoor), which set an 8m18.602s – just 3.645s off the top spot.
Completing the top five was the Mathey Racing Porsche 911 with an 8m21.717s for Kevin Estre, Thomas Preining and Ayhancan Güven.
The 3.5-hour Qualifying 2 will begin at 8pm local time in Germany to give drivers the chance of tackling the Nordschleife in the dark.
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