Nurburgring 24h: Catsburg’s BMW tops curtailed first qualifying

Catsburg lapped in 8m14.771s, which is six seconds behind the track record of BMW colleague Augusto Farfus.

Second place went to the #101 BMW of Walkenhorst Motorsport (Krognes/Soucek/Trogen/J. Müller), ahead of the #12 HRT Mercedes (Marciello/Ellis/Stolz), the #27 Toksport-WRT Porsche (Andlauer/Campbell/Jaminet) and the #4 GetSpeed Mercedes (Engel/Gounon/Juncadella).

The best Audi was the #15 of Phoenix Racing entry (K. van der Linde/D. Vanthoor/Vervisch/Frijns) in sixth position, while the best non-German GT3 car, the #90 TF Sport Aston Martin (Sörensen/Thiim/Pittard/Martin), was ninth.

Among some bizarre incidents during the session, the #102 Walkenhorst BMW (J. Müller/M. von Bohlen/Tuck/Schmidt-Staade) hit the #116 KTM and came to a halt in the Yokohama-S. 

A mishap then happened to the DMSB squad while it was being towed back to the pits: the BMW crashed into the tow truck, damaging its front.

The CP-Mercedes #21 (Putman/Espenlaub/Foster/Lewis) dragged itself around the GP track with a damaged front after it torpedoed the Toyota #120 (Supaphongs/Jian Hong/Kawamura) in the Yokohama-S. The Toyota continued without a left-side door.

The Muhlner Porsche #131 also had an accident on the approach to the Advan bend. Later, the Huber Porsche #25 (Thyssen/Rader/N. Menzel/Kern) also stopped at this point.

These multiple incidents led to an early end of the session. Race director Walter Hornung that the chequered flag was shown about 20 minutes earlier than planned due to repair work on the crash barriers.