Post-race technical nightmare for Max Verstappen, Jules Gounon, and Daniel Juncadella: The trio has been stripped of its Nürburgring Nordschleife win due to a major tyre blunder.
The Verstappen party at the second race of the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie (NLS) has been cut short in the most painful way possible. After dominating the 58th ADAC Barbarossapreis, the #3 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 has been officially stripped of its victory.
The cause is a technical breach involving tyre usage. During the post-race scan of the barcode logs, the technical commission discovered that the team had utilized seven sets of tires, exceeding the strict limit of six allowed for the race day.
In the NLS, there is zero margin for error in the technical regulations—disqualification was the only viable outcome for exceeding the allocation.
“The disqualification is tough to take. Unfortunately, we made an internal error that left the stewards with no choice but to exclude the winning car”, Winward Team Principal Christian Hohenadel explained.
“It was our first outing as a full Mercedes-AMG Performance Team on the Nordschleife, and I want to apologize to all the fans who were cheering us on.”
“We’ll analyze every single process today, learn from it, and come back even stronger for the 24 Hours.”
With the #3 AMG excluded, the victory is handed to the #99 Rowe Racing BMW duo of Dan Harper and Jordan Pepper, followed by the #44 Falken Porsche of Tim Heinemann and Sven Müller.
The Losch 48 Motorsport by Black Falcon Porsche driven by Dylan Pereira, Tobias Müller and Patrick Assenheimer inherits third place, which marks a fairytale ending for the Pro-Am winning squad, scoring a maiden overall podium finish on their SP9 debut.
While Verstappen, Juncadella, and Gounon will not be able to take home their trophies, their dominant performance remains. A gap of 59.5 seconds at the finish line can’t be explained by the use of one additional tyre set alone.
It nevertheless underlines the importance of preparation races for the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring. Should Verstappen elect to participate, the next NLS race would be on April 11th.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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