The 2010 Nurburgring 24 Hours - An Unbelievable Event And An Unbelievable Race  
 

The Nurburgring 24 Hours has grown, in my 4 years there as part of the Radio Le Mans Commentary team, into one of my favourite events of the year – the sheer size of the event, 200 cars on the world’s best circuit and with a massive and enthusiastic crowd just gives this ‘happening’ something very special.

And then we came to the 2010 race.

The ingredients were encouraging to start with :

The usual serious efforts from Porsche and Manthey Racing , their instantly successful new GT3 R and the fascinating new Hybrid version with car after car packed chock full with top driving talent.

Audi get more and more serious too about this race – They were back again with their ever more impressive R8 LMS – Black Falcon, a team renowned for their flawlessly prepared pay-drive BMWs turned up this year with a pair of R8s joining Audi regulars Phoenix and Abt.

Ferrari were here too, Hankook Tyres more than half decade history here continuing with LMS regulars Farnbacher Racing bringing the Prancing Horse to the race for the very first time.

And then there was the return of BMW with a potentially race winning car for the first time since the retirement of the M3 GTR after its 2006 overall race win.

And that was without the class winning potential a little further back from factory backed efforts from VW, Lexus, Aston Martin, Opel and Nissan, and of course the myriad privateer efforts that would get into the mix too.

It was a race that kept us busy for the full 24 Hours – there was literally barely a moment when there wasn’t a battle or two to talk about on air – Very often for the overall lead, a podium position or a major class win.

It seemed at times to be the race that nobody could win – a car hitting the front seemed doomed to hit trouble, or somebody else!

Audi all but melted down with a variety of issues as one by one the pro-crews fell by the wayside, the #100 car crashing out just yards after taking the overall lead, the #98 car losing its vital fluids after Basseng clattered a kerb whilst running very strongly, the #2 and #99 cars hit mechanical troubles too. 

The R8 LMS then, possibly for the first time, looked vulnerable, and the cars looked very much on the edge too when pushing hard, far less composed than the Porsches and BMWs. 

Porsche too though had their problems – The #1 Manthey car looked as solid and quick in 2010 GT3 R form as it had in GT3 RSR form last season but a ricocheting VW Golf ended Olaf’s lead crew’s dreams of yet another overall win.

Porsche reliability is normally rock solid but it seemed that even Manthey was struggling – the sight of mechanics underneath cars in the garage became a staple shot for the TV crews in the mid race period, gearbox and gear linkage issues hitting three of the five Manthey entries. 

That left one front-running 997 – and a win would have been a major international story for Porsche had their new hybridised lasted the course – It led comfortably, looked to have performance in hand to deal with any threat from behind but just when a famous victory looked within the orange and white #9 car’s grasp the flat six coughed its last and rolled to a halt at Adenau – and as it did so Porsche, and Manthey’s, hopes of a fourth consecutive win died with it.

The Hankook Farnbacher Ferrari had its bad luck in qualifying – after surprising almost everyone with a time which topped the order in the first session the F430 failed to complete a lap in the second, dry, session after contact with one of the 65 BMWs in the race.  After that though there was barely a hiccup to report, a mature drive saw the car rising further and further up the order and, had this extraordinary race taken just one more extraordinary twist, quite astonishingly they would have won it!  Second place though was a quite correct reward for a hugely professional run at the race.

And so to BMW – pre-race focus was firmly on the near – IMSA spec pair of Schnitzer BMW M3 GT2s but perhaps the new Z4 GT3s (of which there were three in the race) should have been looked at more carefully too.

The Z4s lost one of their number early on when the #77 Need for Speed/ Schubert car had a car wrecking off but the remaining pair were always in contention for top ten finishes and, in the case of the second (#76) Need for Speed car challenged hard for a podium finish.

As for the Schnitzer M3s, two very nearly became one when Dirk Werner royally messed up an overtaking move and bounced the #26 car fully three feet into the air off an Armco barrier – The car though was refettled by the team and charged, there’s no other word for it, back up the order, back into the top 100, then the 50, 20 and finally into the top 10 – 7^th overall was a massive result for this car after such a long delay.

It wasn’t though as massive a result as that which the sister #25 car achieved.  The Schnitzer team are past masters at this endurance racing game and it showed.

As others fell by the wayside the pressure was applied and the M3 took advantage – As the Hybrid rolled to a halt the #25 took the final leap up the order to achieve an historic victory, in particular for Pedro Lamy, the Portugese superstar equalling Marcel Tiemann’s record 5 victories in the race.

Let’s hear it too though for the gas fuelled VW Scirocco, the spectacular looking (and sounding) Lexus LF-A and the Aston Martin V8 Vantage – convincing class winners all, and all had to fight hard for their silverware with all the major classes suffering similar dramas to the overall battle.

Indeed Aston Martin very nearly took a pair of class wins, the V12 Vantage taking advantage of the Lexus LF-A’s both hitting trouble at the same time but finally falling victim to its own delay just when there looked to be a final showdown in prospect as the #50 Lexus staged a recovery drive that would allow it to reclaim the class win.

And there were the usual ‘hero’ efforts from several of the lower classes, none more so than the extraordinary efforts of the #133 Audi TTS crew that saw the car into the top 20 overall for hour after hour – 15^th place overall and an SP3 class win was a richly deserved result.