Intercontinental GT Challenge - Round 2 - Grello versus ROWE see BMW clinch victory in 24H thriller

Manthey EMA Porsche crosses the line first, but a penalty hands the victory to the #98 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 in a wild night of crashes, strategy and typical Nürburgring chaos!

The 2025 edition of the Nürburgring 24 Hours got underway under relatively calm conditions, but it didn’t take long for the infamous Nordschleife to claim its first victims. Starting from pole position, the #911 Manthey EMA Porsche 992 GT3 R, with Thomas Preining at the wheel, made a clean getaway, and immediately pulled clear of the chasing pack. Maro Engel in the #14 Team Bilstein by GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo slotted into second, while behind them, Augusto Farfus lit up the opening lap with a stellar charge in the #98 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 Evo, jumping from seventeenth to tenth position in the first lap of the circuit.

As the field completed its first hour, a sense of rhythm developed up front, with Preining’s pace in the #911 “Grello” Porsche seeming to be relentless, gradually building up a twenty-second gap over the #14 Mercedes, and the #45 Realize Kondo Racing with Rinaldi Racing Ferrari 296 GT3, with the #98 BMW making steady gains in clean air. However, major drama unfolded when the #347 Toyo Tires with Ring Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup MR of Andreas Gülden suffered a heavy spin and attempted to limp back to the pits, but instead pulled off track at the Fuchsröhre.

When the race closed in on the opening hour of the race, many of the top ten cars started pitting, including the #45 Ferrari of David Perel, the #17 Team GetSpeed Mercedes of Adam Christodoulou, the #34 Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Mattia Drudi, the #1 Scherer Sport PHX Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Markus Winkelhock, the #98 BMW of Farfus, while the #30 Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin of Christian Bollrath made his way into the barriers at Pflanzgarten, with some light-damage and scuffs on the left-hand side.

On the next lap round, Preining was still leading in the “Grello” #911 Porsche, this time he was followed by Sven Müller in the #33 Falken Motorsports Porsche, Gabriele Piana in the #48 Black Falcon Team EAE Porsche, Dirk Müller in the #63 HRT Ford Performance Ford Mustang GT3, Maximilian Paul in the #7 Konrad Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo, Pierre Kaffer in the #8 Juta Racing Audi, Thomas Mutsch in the #786 Renazzo Motorsport Team Lamborghini and Kenneth Heyer in the #11 SR Motorsport by Schnitzelalm Mercedes-AMG. At this point, Engel, Marco Mapelli and others pitted in the #14 Mercedes-AMG and #28 Abt Sportsline Lamborghini.

With seven laps in the books, Preining finally came into the pits, handing the car over to Kévin Estre, while all the other runners in the top ten also pitted. During the pitstops, David Perel took over the lead of the race in the #45 Ferrari, while Estre dropped down to eighth position, and just moments later, Jannes Fittje in the #11 Mercedes found himself stuck in the gravel on the Grand Prix circuit, with his right-rear wheel completely off.

Fierce battles began to brew in the top SP9 class, where a moment after going through a slow-zone saw Christodoulou in the #14 Mercedes, Christopher Haase in the #1 Audi and Drudi in the #34 Aston Martin all get checked up behind a Cayman GT4. Haase briefly made contact with Drudi in the Aston Martin, which resulted in Engel passing the #1 Scherer Sport PHX Audi at the moment. Another tight moment was between Haase, once again, and Engel on the Döttingher Höhe, where the two were battling for fourth and fifth positions, where Haase overtook the Mercedes down the long straight, but Engel managed to keep his AMG ahead into Antoniusbuche.

The race was briefly interrupted and neutralised just before nightfall when a major power outage affected timing and pit operations, notably the refuelling systems. A red flag was deployed while officials as well as circuit staff began to resolve the issue, allowing teams to regroup, and when the race was resumed two hours later, Kévin Estre took the #911 Porsche back into the lead, and immediately started to reassert their dominance in the race, posting successive fastest laps with clockwork precision, and extended their lead further past the two-minute mark.

Meanwhile, the ROWE Racing BMW had not stopped making progress as Kelvin van der Linde passed Luca Engstler in the #28 Abt Sportsline Lamborghini around the outside before the final chicane on the Grand Prix circuit for fifth position.

Many pitstops later, the #45 Ferrari seemed to retake the lead of the race again with seventeen laps completed, with Ayhancan Güven in Grello coming out in second, while Kelvin van der Linde managed to jump into fourth this time, due to pitting a lap earlier. Just a few moments later, the race started to pull more victims, this time the leader in the SP10 class, Guido Wirtz in the #111 SR Motorsport by Schnitzelalm Mercedes-AMG GT4, who crashed at Adenauer-Forst. Attrition began, and before the end of that hour, Eric Ullström had a moment at Hohe-Acht, and found his #50 équipe vitesse Audi in the barriers after a heavy hit, fortunately missing other cars around him.

A key moment of the race arrived just as the sun was glancing the horizon, when Stefan Kiefer in the #94 Sante Royale Racing Team Porsche 992 GT3 Cup had been hit and spun at turn one, when all of a sudden Julien Andlauer in the #33 Falken Motorsports Porsche 992 GT3 R, who was in second position behind Güven in Grello, hit the stricken Porsche Cup, and had heavy damage to the front. This put an end to both of the Porsche’s races, and suddenly changed the dynamic as the race entered darkness.

With just over seventeen hours to go, Luca Ludwig managed to put the #1 Scherer Sport PHX Audi into the barriers at Klostertal, which he managed to limp back to the pits, but unfortunately was the end of the race for the reigning Audi crew.

Things went from bad to worse for the Falken Motorsport crew, when the sole-surviving #44 Porsche of Dorian Boccolacci was slow on the Döttingher Höhe, with a right-rear puncture while in fourth position with fourteen hours remaining. 

As the clock ticked through twelve hours completed, it was Kévin Estre still leading in the #911 Manthey EMA Porsche, followed by Augusto Farfus in the #98 ROWE Racing BMW just under three-minutes behind, but he had company from Nicki Thiim in the #34 Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin. 

Hours later, David Pittard started to go slowly in the #34 Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin at the Caracciola-Karussell, and pulled off track at Hohe Acht briefly before continuing. However, the issues persisted and he was seen stopped once again at Hohenrain, just before the pit entry, and continued later and entered the pits immediately, and just minutes later, it was another confirmed retirement, all while running as high as third.

Once again, disaster struck the SP10 leader of Andrea Mijatovic in the #187 FK Performance Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 who suffered a puncture, and was running slow, dropping positions through the overall order, and within class. As the sun rose in the morning, there was a major incident between an SP9 car, and a TCR car, this time the #303 Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai Elantra Cup of Jeff Ricca was hit by Daniel Juncadella in the #27 Red Bull Team Abt Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 at Brünnchen after exiting a slow-zone, which left the Hyundai with plenty of damage and out of the race.

Merely minutes later, another major incident occurred, this time it involved the fan-favourite #300 Ollis Garage Racing Dacia Logan of Martin Kaffka, where he was assumedly hit by Aris Balanian in the #74 Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT4 Evo from the SP10 class at the exit of Flugplatz. The Aston Martin sustained heavy damage, and the Kaffka from the Dacia Logan was heartbroken and devastated with yet another disappointing and unfortunate incident taking the favourite car out of the race.

More drama struck when the #17 Team GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Ralf Aron was wheeled into the garage with just seven hours to go. The car managed to get back out on track just a few minutes later with Lucas Auer at the wheel, but he came straight back into the pits after some very strange and unusual sounds were heard. Once the car was in the garage, we could clearly see a detached undertray, which was grinding down on the circuit.

During this time, the gap between Thomas Preining in the leading #911 “Grello” Porsche and Raffaele Marciello in the #98 ROWE Racing BMW had begun to continuously close, and with six hours remaining, the gap was just twelve seconds. After this, Marciello seemed to gain even more time from the circuit, and the next lap was just 3.9 seconds behind. The biggest, and most controversial moment of the race happened with just five hours and forty minutes to go, when the gap for the lead of the race between Kévin Estre and Marciello was just barely a second, and we saw Estre make contact with Rolf Scheibner in the #179 Dörr Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT4 at Wehrseifen, seeing the Aston Martin flip upside down, with Marciello having to jump across the kerb to avoid being hit. Thankfully, Scheibner walked away from the incident, but was held upside down for a considerable amount of time, and most importantly, the #911 Manthey EMA Porsche was handed a one-hundred-second penalty for the incident.

With over three hours to go, the #45 Realize Kondo Racing with Rinaldi Ferrari 296 GT3 of Felipe Fernández Laser had crashed with Dan Berghult in the #101 EiFelkind Racing BMW 325i at the Stefan-Bellof-S. The Ferrari, which started in second position at the start of the race after a great lap from Thomas Neubauer, had been running in the top ten for the majority of the race, but this spelt the end of the Japanese teams’ shot at a good result.

Despite “Grello” receiving a penalty, the Manthey EMA team were determined to appeal and remove the penalty, therefore they did not serve the penalty during any of the last pitstops. As the timer began to run out, the gap between “Grello” and the ROWE Racing BMW, this time in the hands of Kelvin van der Linde, began to fluctuate between a few seconds, to around twenty seconds at some points, as the two weaved their way through the continuous traffic around the Nordschleife.

In the end, it was the #911 Manthey EMA Porsche 992 GT3 R of Kévin Estre, Ayhancan Güven and Thomas Preining who took the chequered flag first after completing 141 laps, but the gap to the #98 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 Evo of Augusto Farfus, Jesse Krohn, Kelvin van der Linde and Raffaele Marciello was just twenty-two seconds, therefore BMW took the win for the 2025 edition of the Nürburgring 24 Hours due to the penalty for “Grello”, and most importantly, the #98 BMW, which did not feature in top qualifying, started in seventeenth position. Third position went the way of the #54 Dinamic GT Porsche of Bastian Buus, Matteo Cairoli, Loek Hartog and Joel Sturm, a lap down from the #911 and #98.

SP9 Pro-Am honours went the way of the #65 HRT Ford Performance Ford Mustang GT3 of Dennis Fetzer, Jusuf Owega, Salman Owega and David Schumacher, who finished in fourth position overall, just ahead of the #28 Abt Sportsline Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 of Christian Engelhart, Luca Engstler and Marco Mapelli.

Other notable class results include the SP8T class, which is reserved for race cars with a turbocharged-engine with a capacity between 2601 and 4000cc, where the Dörr Motorsport McLaren Artura Trophy of Ben Dörr, Phil Dörr, Mike David Ortmann and Volker Strycek finished in nineteenth position overall, completing 131 laps of the Nordschleife. Second position in the SP8T class went to the “influencer” BMW M4 GT4 Evo from Team Bilstein by Black Falcon, with Jimmy Broadbent, Steve Brown (Super GT), Mikhail Charoudin and Manuel Metzger.

INTERCONTINENTAL GT CHALLENGE CONTINUES

The 2025 Intercontinental GT Challenge continues from the Nürburgring 24 Hours to the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium on the 24th - 29th June 2025, where the all-GT3 grid will feature many participants from Nürburgring, as well as other teams from around the world!

Images © Gruppe C Photography