Nurburgring 24h: No stopping Rowe BMW in third qualifying

Nick Catsburg’s Friday laptime in the #98 Rowe BMW of 8m14.771s once again couldn’t be beaten, so it goes into the top qualifying session as the fastest car. It will still have to grab a top time in TQ1 for the all-important TQ2 session that follows.

Catsburg’s teammate Sheldon van der Linde said: “My laps were good, I prepared for the top qualifying. The main task is to make it into Top Qualifying 2. The M4 is mega good and fast to drive.”

Maro Engel took the #4 GetSpeed Mercedes (shared with Jules Gounon and Dani Juncadella) to second place, moving it ahead of the #101 Walkenhorst BMW (Krognes/Soucek/Trogen/J. Muller), the #27 Toksport-WRT Porsche (Andlauer/Campbell/Jaminet) and the #55 Landgraf Mercedes (Assenheimer/Trefz/Baumann/Apotheloz).

The best Audi car is the #5 Phoenix car (V. Kolb/Stippler/Feller/K. van der Linde) in which Ricardo Feller set the eighth fastest time.

Best non-German car this time was the Konrad Lamborghini #7 (Jefferies/Pepper/di Martino/Hacklander), which Jordan Pepper brought up to ninth position.

Tim Heinemann put the #116 True-KTM (Kofler/Siljehaug/Hofer/Heinemann) into 10th place, while the #706 Glickenhaus (Mutsch/Laser/Mailleux/Westbrook) slotted into P14.

Once again there were numerous incidents. The #90 TF Sport Aston Martin (Sorensen/Thiim/Pittard/Martin) flew off-track in the Hatzenbach area.

A short time later the Huber-Porsche #70 (Menzl/Berg/Hamprecht) was manoeuvred into the tyre stacks by the frontrunning GetSpeed-Mercedes #4 in the Flugplatz area.