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The Races

The Race is on, and while his colleagues were putting their feet up and enjoying a weekend without racing, Max Verstappen was taking part in one of the most demanding 24-hour events in the world. But how did he get on? What impact did he have on the race and what does this tell us about his future? I'm Ed Strawn, joining me from the Nureberg Ring is Josh Sittal. Well, Josh, you've done a 24-hour race. So how fit are you for podcasting? That's a big question. Do you have much sleep? No, I did go for a sleep

strategy. Some people went all the way through, but I learned my lesson from before. I did that

a lemon before and would not recommend it to anyone. So this time I had two hours, about 3 a.m.

And didn't actually miss too much. So it was actually well-timed. I was quite proud of my strategy.

And yeah, feeling really great now. Yeah, I'm a great believer in that structure. I always, when covering 24-hour races, went away. Even if you just had like an hour's sleep, get up, have a shower, break up, create a new day. That's actually a really important thing to do. and you have made it to the end of the race successfully,

unlike the number three Mercedes of Max Vestappen, Daniel Junkardier, Jorgon, and Lucas

Hour that was leading and in a commanding position until problem struck just sort of within the

four hour to go, Mark, wasn't it, Josh? So was victory guaranteed and what went wrong? Well, I think victory is never guaranteed here, and I think that's what we've learned throughout the 24 hours. I did say before the race, actually, that to me, it just felt like it wasn't going to happen for Team Vist happened because I had no doubt that they had all the performance necessary, and I think they proved that before the event, during the event. And they'll prove it after the event again, I'm sure. But there's just so much we can go wrong here. There are so many hurdles. So many of the big hitters were lost in the first few hours. And you just were almost just waiting for something to happen to one of the two Mercedes cars. And yeah, it just happened to be the Vestapun car. I see, Danny O'Henka was at the wheel. He had a message, or the team got a message basically saying something wrong with the ABS. He sort of tried to manage it and then had a lot of vibrations aboard the Mercedes to where I think where it was quite obvious for something was wrong. He really,

really tried to get it around and I guess just willing to keep it in the lead or at least

keep it in second because of course they had quite a sizable advantage behind them. So there was

a bit of a safety net there. But it turned out to be quite a major problem. Young Godaya brought

it in only on the third lap of his stint. The team had a look at it, looked like a fairly major drive shaft issue, nothing that could be easily fixed. So, yeah, that was pretty much effectively the end of their race. They did get back out there just for the last above laps to kind of tick it off to sort of say they basically finished it.

But I think they were about 21 laps down and in 38th. So yeah, not much to celebrate, unfortunately, with the end result. I guess, for one what I've heard, it sounds like the investigations will carry on to exactly what caused it. But it seems like, to be honest, just one of those things where the, you know, one of the toughest circuits in the world has taken its toll on a car after such a long time out there. And what about the reaction of the team? How gutted were they, particularly some of his teammates, actually, because although this is Max Verstappen's first attempt, all of those three with him have varying numbers of Nurembergaring 24 hours outings. I don't think any of them have won it before.

So particularly Danny and Gidea, who has done it quite a few times, probably thought the victory was within his grasp. If anything, it might even mean more to them than it does to Vestappen. Don't get me wrong, Vastappen absolutely wants to win, and he came here to win. he didn't come here just for a distraction from F1 and to have a good time.

He very much came here to win.

But yeah, for those other drivers, I mean, they put so much into it as well. Like you say, we saw the quite visceral reaction from Juncadaya because, yeah, they'd done everything right. Just to put yourself in the shoes of those three of other drivers this weekend, you know, you're driving and sharing a car with the best driver in the world and any little thing that you do wrong or if you're not quite matching up to Vassappan, you'll get a tirade of focus on social media and, you know, across everything, people will be asking questions of you and, yeah, like you say, they're comparing you to Maxus Appen to the best driver in the world.

And I think that all three of them, you know, put in a really, really good account of themselves. And I think, to be honest, they were fairly proud of what they'd done. I think they'd realized that it was a really tough task. And it wasn't as if one of them had tripped over a bat marker or one of them had, you know, made a very obvious mistake. It just seemed like one of those things.

So I think that in a way makes it easy to accept.

Never nice to, to lose a victory. But at least I think as far as all four of them are concerned, they know that they didn't do anything wrong. It was simply just a look of the North Schlafer God said, you know, not this year for the team of Steppenkart. And how about Max? Has he spoken of his disappointments or is it just as you'd expect from him, kind of, well, that's racing? Yeah, he's been keeping a very low profile, obviously part of the appeal of going to the Nebbinger Nor Shlyfer is that he doesn't have all these media commitments. He doesn't have to come and speak to the media after every session like he does in Formula One. I think he enjoys that. He still did a couple of interviews though and I spoke to a couple of people within the team, just ask how he reacted. And they just said he reacted the same way he has done throughout this whole process, just with a great degree of professionalism and a great deal of leadership as well. I think he's really kind of taken on that role.

Obviously, it is the team of Sappan Carr, and he seems to have taken on that role. He supported his teammates a lot. And I think he knows that, you know, he's not going to go around making a big fuss of it because at the end of the day, he needs to lead by example. And his message apparently was very, very clear is that they are going to be back. They're going to be back at race, and next time it will be different because they know that they did lots and lots of things right. They just need to come back and get revenge. And he was, yeah, I can say very supportive of his teammates as well. It's a very close group. And yeah, I think he handled it very, very well. And it was, of course, the sister Mercedes that won the Winward Racing,angold lucasdolz fabian schiller and maxine

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