24 Hours Of Racing Prowess

We pay a visit, and pay homage, to one of the world’s maddest overnight motor races at the Nurburgring with BMW.

- Edric Pan

ONE lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife in a near 5 metre-long BMW M6 GT3 with close to 600bhp ripping through its rear wheels is probably daunting enough.

But to drive such a monster around a racetrack so dangerous that it’s been deemed unsafe for F1 for the past 40 years, for a full 24 hours, through the night, through mist, fog and rain, must be downright terrifying.

But that’s just what seven teams of drivers of BMW’s GT3-category contender did over the last weekend of May, hurling their snarling, howling and popping beasts through the max-speed straights and 73 turns of this fearsome, legendary racetrack, in close proximity to over 150 other racecars piloted by similarly loony men (and a few women).

And that’s why the crowds (estimated at a quarter-million!) flock religiously every year to the Nurburgring 24 Hours race – to witness these nutters hurtling around this long, narrow ribbon of tarmac which undulates, dips and rises through the pine forests in Germany’s Eifel region. It’s not just a motor race,