Key Points

Qualifying on Friday afternoon was a nail-biter, with just two seconds covering the five quickest SP3T runners. The AsBest Racing Cupra slotted into fifth, its crew quietly confident that race savvy would outweigh outright pace.

When 130 cars rolled away for the warm-up lap on Saturday, a violent jolt in third gear sent panic through the cockpit, the DSG gearbox stuck momentarily, and by the time the lights went green the #808 had tumbled to seventh. Any thoughts of damage limitation lasted exactly one lap. Lutz Obermann, fuelled by home-crowd energy, carved through the pack with 15 breathtaking passes in seven laps, hauling the Cupra into third before handing to Leissing.

Later on, Gupta's stint was equally dramatic. He hustled the car up to second place, only for the lurking gearbox gremlin to trigger an unscheduled stop that dropped the team to fourth. As darkness fell, endurance racing's natural law of attrition took over: the Dacia Logan spun into the barriers, the crowd-favourite Beetle RSR coasted to retirement and Sharky Racing's Golf expired, elevating the privateer squad to a comfortable third while shadowing the factory BMW and Hyundai programs.

Just after midnight, the race turned on its head when Hyundai's Elantra suffered a huge crash at Pflanzgarten. The incident promoted the Cupra to second, but fate struck back at 06:00 when Junichi Umemoto was involved in an incident with the sister Porsche Cayman at Wippermann. Marshals towed the damaged car five kilometres to the pits, where mechanics rebuilt the front-end and replaced the rear suspension in an astonishing one hour and 45 minutes. The lengthy stop surrendered second place to the factory MINI, yet with daylight breaking and the gearbox finally behaving, Gupta and Dennis Leissing nursed the Cupra to the chequered flag after 101 laps -- greeted by thunderous applause from an estimated 280,000 spectators lining the Nordschleife's campsites and grandstands.

Akshay said as quoted by a press release from the racer's team, "They really say this race chooses its winners. I now know what it really means. We had the pace to win and the top 2 cars were almost 30 seconds off the pace and yet they are there. It's disheartening. But I'm not complaining too much. Podium is still a lot given how intense the competition was and how crazy this race is.

The Nurburgring 24 hours is, in my opinion, the best race in the world. The entire atmosphere with the fans, the nature of the racetrack in dark, all of it is unmatched.

- ANI