The second race of the Nürburgring Endurance Series was a true motorsport thriller. The notorious Eifel weather played a big part in this at the NIMEX 47th DMV 4-hour race. Jakub 'Kuba' Giermaziak and 'Jesse Krohn' in the Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 coped best with the difficult conditions in the Green Hell. After 4:02:08.251 hours, the duo was flagged off as winners. Their lead over second-placed Matteo Cairoli and Julien Andlauer in the Porsche 911 GT3 R from Rutronik Racing was 21.764 seconds at the finish. Daniel Harper, Max Hesse and Neil Verhagen in the BMW M4 GT3 of the BMW Junior Team finished third.

In qualifying on Saturday morning, the runners-up were still the fastest: Rutronik Racing celebrated its first pole position in the NLS. Italian Cairoli lapped the 24.358-kilometre combination of the Nürburgring short circuit and Nordschleife on a drying track in 9:06.584 minutes. The first 18 positions were within an interval of less than ten seconds at the end of the time chase. Second place in qualifying went to ROWE RACING. In the race, however, starting driver Eng had an accident at the airfield on lap one, so that the #99 car was unable to repeat its victory from the opening race.
The opening phase turned into a tyre poker game. On a wet track, the choice of tyres was crucial at the start. Courage paid off, as in the end the teams that opted for slicks were successful. The Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed with drivers Adam Christodoulou, Maximilian Götz and Fabian Schiller returned from lap one in the lead. Giermaziak took the lead on lap two. Due to a deviating strategy, the Porsche 911 GT3 R of Manthey EMA with Kévin Estre and Thomas Preining also took the lead for a while. In the end, however, Walkenhorst was too dominant. Overall, Giermaziak / Krohn led the field for 17 of 27 laps.
"These mixed conditions simply suit me," said Giermaziak. "Maybe that's also because I've been concentrating exclusively on the Nürburgring Endurance Series for the last two years. Besides that, we always made the right tyre choice and had a perfect strategy in the end." However, the Pole suspects that some of his competitors did not exploit their full potential: "That's always the case before the 24h race. Some teams don't want to reveal their performance. We, on the other hand, just drove full throttle."
In the end, the Rutronik team was very satisfied with second place. "We are very happy," said Cairoli. "We already worked very consistently during the test on Friday and improved our setup step by step. So I felt very comfortable in our Porsche, especially in qualifying in the morning. With an almost perfect car and a bit of luck in the Code 60 stages, we were able to finish on the podium."
The BMW Junior Team managed a real tour de force. "Our qualifying wasn't ideal with seventh place, then at the start I lost a few more places, so we dropped back to P16," said Verhagen. "After that, we drove strong stints and worked our way forward. But in the end - admittedly - we also benefited from a penalty from the third-placed Falken Porsche. Otherwise it would have been very tight with the podium on our own."
The fact that the Falken-Porsche only finished in a thankless fourth place was due to a penalty handed out by the stewards after Alessio Picariello touched a car while lapping. The Manthey EMA Porsche was classified fifth. ROWE RACING took sixth place with the remaining BMW M4 GT3. Best Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO II was the #15 Audi Sport Team Scherer PHX. The top 10 positions were completed by Audi Sport Team Land, the second Falken Porsche and the GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG of Christodoulou/Götz/Schiller.
Victory in the SP9 Am classification went to Maxime Dumarey and Christoph Breuer in the PROsport-Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3. Best Pro-Am drivers were Charles Espenlaub and Shane Lewis in CP Racing's Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Victory in the highly competitive CUP2 class of the Porsche Endurance Trophy Nürburgring went to Christopher Brück and Moritz Kranz for KKrämer Racing. Second place went to BLACK FALCON Team IDENTICA. There was also a thrilling duel in the CUP3. AVIA W&S Motorsport with Marius Rauer, Moritz Oberheim and Finn Zulauf prevailed against SRS Team Sorg Rennsport. Heiko Eichenberg, Patrick Grütter and Fabio Grosse were only 1.617 seconds off first place at the finish.

The fastest car in the alternative fuel class was the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup from FourMotors Bioconcept-Car - driven by rapper Smudo, Henrik Bollerslev, Thomas Kiefer and 'TOM'. Last year's champions are still on course for success. Daniel Zils, Oskar Sandberg and Philipp Leisen in the Adrenalin Motorsport Team Motec BMW 330i delivered a thrilling duel with Ranko Mjatovic, Michael Schrey and Sindre Setsaas in the FK Performance Motorsport counterpart, who again had to settle for second place.
In a fortnight' time, the Nürburgring Endurance Series will be back in action. The 54th Adenauer ADAC Rundstrecken-Trophy will conclude the first third of the season on 15 April 2023. Tickets are available for 20 euros (children up to 14 years free of charge) at vln.de/tickets and at the box offices. This will get you into the open grandstands at the Grand Prix circuit, the exclusive spectator areas Brünnchen and Pflanzgarten as well as the paddock, the pit lane, the starting grid and the motorsport experience museum ring°werk.