Nurburgring 24h: Weather set to impact closing stages as Audi leads

The #15 Phoenix Audi of Kelvin van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor, Frederic Vervisch and Robin Frijns holds all the aces.

The R8 is leading the race in the hands of Vanthoor and also has an advantage in terms of strategy: it has been routinely pitting one lap after their main rival, the #3 GetSpeed Mercedes of Adam Christodoulou, Maxi Gotz and Fabian Schiller.

This means that, in addition to the razor-thin lead on the road, the Audi quartet still has 23 seconds up their sleeve due to strategy. Schiller, who is currently driving the GetSpeed car, has to make up 25 seconds to get his car into the leading position.

The weather could play into the GetSpeed team's hands as it has started to rain in some sections of the track. While the two leading cars are on slicks, GetSpeed has fitted the #4 with cut slick tyres.

The team's second AMG is in P3 after adjusting for stops, but in the morning, Maro Engel, Jules Gounon and Dani Juncadella have increasingly lost touch with the front runners.

As things stand, they are fighting with the #20 Schubert BMW (Krohn/Sims/Klingmann/Krutten) and the #22 Car Collection Audi (Haase/N. Muller/Niederhauser/Rast) for the last place on the podium.

Both the Audi and the BMW challenges have been weakened. Late on Sunday morning, the #22 Car Collection Audi collected a time penalty of 32 seconds for disregarding flag signals. The #20 Schubert BMW was caught out by a small shower in the Kallenhard area at around 7:45am local time and crashed there.

Porsche has had nothing to do with the fight for victory for some time now. The best 911 GT3 R, car #18 from KCMG (Olsen/Tandy/Bamber), is one lap down in 10th place.

The best non-German car is the #7 Konrad Lamborghini (Jefferies/Pepper/di Martino/Hacklander) in 12th, while the #706 Glickenhaus (Mutsch/Laser/Mailleux/Westbrook) is the best non-GT3 car in P15.