ROWE Racing BMW takes Nurburgring 24 win after penalty to Manthey Porsche

BMW captured a record-extending 21st overall Nurburgring 24 Hours victory this afternoon in controversial and dramatic circumstances.

The 2025 edition of the race was incident-packed from start to finish. Despite staying bone dry, it was even red-flagged for two and a half hours early on due to a trackside power outage, believed to have been caused by the pit building’s air conditioning system.

The No. 911 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R 992 crossed the line first after dominating almost the entire race, but it was the No. 98 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 Evo of Raffaele Marciello, Augusto Farfus, Jesse Krohn and Kelvin van der Linde that took the victory.

Manthey's "Grello" Porsche was forced to settle for second, after a 100-second penalty was added to its race time after it crossed the line. The fan-favorite team, in search of a seventh win, was found to have been responsible for causing its collision with the No. 179 Dörr Motorsport Aston Martin GT4 from one of the lower classes at the three-quarter distance mark.

Factory ace Kevin Estre took the blame for his controversial lunge up the inside of the Vantage, which sent Rolf Scheibner and his car into the guardrail barriers and onto its roof between Kallenhard and Wehrseifen.

Despite receiving the stewards’ penalty notice with three hours on the clock, the Manthey team opted not to serve the penalty before the end. Instead, they held track position for the run to the flag while appealing the decision.

No. 911 led all but eight of the 141 laps, but a stewards' ruling cost them big. Gruppe C Photography

The infraction put a sour note on a truly remarkable performance for the No. 911 crew of Estre, Ayhancan Güven and Thomas Preining, who led all but eight of the 141 laps. In the second half of the race, they only fell to second for three tours of the circuit after Augusto Farfus made a daring pass on Güven down the Döttinger Hohe before the 15th round of stops, during which the cars swapped positions again.

Estre, who was in at the end, took the checkered flag with a 22-second gap to the No. 98 after taking a shorter final pit stop, a lap later than the M4. He did well to keep van der Linde at arm’s length, but it wasn’t enough to seal the win in front of a record crowd of 280,000 fans trackside,

The result appears settled, too, as with just three minutes remaining, confirmation came through from race control that the Manthey team's protest had been rejected.

So it's BMW's day, after ROWE put together a heroic run as the only bullet in the Bavarian marque's gun in the top SP 9 class for GT3 cars. Farfus, Krohn, Marciello and van der Linde all played their part in delivering a record 21st overall win for BMW and a second win for ROWE.

It was a stunning comeback drive, after the car sat more than two and a half minutes off the lead at the halfway mark, struggling to keep tabs on the "Grello" Porsche that proved untouchable when the temperature dropped.

But the ROWE team refused to give up, and Marciello stepped up to the plate. The Swiss turned heads through the morning, doing the heavy lifting by reeling in the Porsche, setting up the No. 98 for its famous victory.

"On Thursday, it looked completely different for us. We had completely different thoughts. But of course, you always want to win. Today, the car won, but the team that made the fewest mistakes. That was us, and we are proud of that,” ROWE Racing team boss Hans-Peter Naundorf said of the result.

Farfus added: ”It’s incredible to win this race. It's the toughest race in the world! The first cars across the line have hardly any scratches. To win here, you have to work perfectly."

Completing the podium was another car that impressed throughout, the Pirelli-shod No. 54 Dinamic Porsche, which gradually climbed the order by staying out of trouble.

It inherited third in the final hour after the No. 28 ABT Sportsline Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO II underwent a rear-brake change at its final stop, costing the Italian marque its first-ever top-three finish in the event.

The ABT Sportsline Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO II, which had a near fault-free 24 hours, initially dropped to fifth, but retook fourth on the final lap...until a post-race 32-second penalty was applied for causing a collision. That gave the No. 65 HRT Ford Mustang GT3, running on Yokohama tires, a fourth-place overall in the team's first N24 as a Ford partner team. The Mustang also claimed the SP 9 Pro/Am honors.

“This weekend was bittersweet because we lost two overnight, but winning the Pro-Am class and placing fourth overall is really more than we expected,” said Ulrich Fritz, Haupt Racing Team GmbH managing director. “It’s the first major Mustang GT3 win in Europe. It was a great team effort, and the drivers did not receive any penalties. We’re very happy. Thank you to everyone involved.”

The grueling Nordscheife took a heavy toll of the field. Gruppe C Photography

As a whole, there was plenty of attrition in the SP 9 GT3 division in this year’s edition of the great German race.

Falken Motorsports’ long wait for a first overall victory continues after a double retirement from its Porsche 911 GT3 R 992s. The No. 33 was hugely unlucky, retiring early on Saturday night after a hard head-on collision. Headlights blinded Julien Andlauer as he piled into the No. 94 Sante Royale Racing Team Cup 2 class Porsche that had been turned around at Turn 2.

That left the No. 44 sister car to pick up the baton, but a puncture overnight and a drivetrain failure on Sunday morning brought the Japanese tire manufacturer’s challenge to an abrupt end.

Mercedes-AMG’s chances of a third overall win faltered long before the checkered flag, too. The two GetSpeed AMG GT3s had pace but suffered technical issues. The No. 14 was out before the 12-hour mark when Maro Engel was pushed back into the garage after stopping at pit-out with a drivetrain issue.

Ralf Aron managed to limp across the line in the sister No. 17 car, which only completed 101 laps as the team opted to park the penalty-hit, mechanically-challenged car through Sunday morning, into the afternoon.

The only Ferrari 296 GT3 in the race from Kondo Racing also had a shot at victory but failed to deliver. The Rinaldi-run racer started on the front row, led before the red flag, then ran most of the race off-sequence after two punctures before crashing out.

Felipe Fernandez Laser was in the car when it was involved in a tangle with a lower-class BMW that led to a hard hit against the guardrails at Schwalbenschwanz with the end of the race in sight.

Scherer Sport PHX’s No. 1 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II and the No. 65 HRT Ford Mustang GT3 may also have featured in the fight for podium positions, but retired from crash damage.

The team's N24 defense met a cruel end before midnight when the team opted to withdraw its Audi from the race following an off for Luca Ludwig just after 10pm local time.

The R8 ended up in the barriers and sustained what looked like suspension damage on its trudge back to the pit lane. Scherer Sport’s team manager, Ron Moser, confirmed that an electronics fault was to blame. That added to a forgettable week for the team, in which its No. 16 Porsche was withdrawn from the event before the race began after Laurens Vanthoor wrote off the new 911 in an incident during Top Qualifying.

The No. 64 Mustang also failed to make it through the night. An incident for Frank Stippler at Flugplatz saw the car damaged beyond repair after 27 laps.

Walkenhorst's No. 34 Aston Martin, meanwhile, featured in the fight for a top-five finish during the first half of the race, but was pulled from the race after a fuel filter issue dropped it out of contention. The team opted to preserve the Vantage rather than send it back out, as it will also take part in the Spa 24 Hours next weekend.

In the other classes, the best-placed car outside of SP 9 was the No. 948 Losch Porsche 911 GT3 Cup that won Cup 2 and enjoyed a metronomic run to 11th overall.

Hyundai’s factory team claimed a fifth consecutive TCR win with a 1-2 finish. The No. 830 Elantra N TCR dominated the four-car category, beating the sister No. 831 with N24 rookie Robert Wickens in its driver line-up by three laps. The Canadian's car car was nursing a turbo issue for the entire race and the car suffered multiple punctures en route to the finish.

The No. 67 AV Racing by Black Falcon BMW M4 GT4 EVO won the GT4 battle in SP 10, after FK Performance’s No. 187 BMW M4 GT4 controlled huge chunks of the race.

The new BMW M2 Racing operated by FK Performance enjoyed a dream N24 debut, winning SP 3T in 36th overall. Dörr Motorsport’s McLaren Artura Trophy Evo also earned its stripes by winning SP 8T and finishing 19th overall on its first attempt.

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