Max Verstappen Showed Up To My Nürburgring Race!

Hello viewers, welcome back. We're at the Nürburgring once again. Now, we've received some very interesting news. Apparently, a certain Mr Max Verstappen is here, otherwise known as Franz Hermann. In fact, garage 23 is where he's at. Let's go and have a look. And just like that, the man himself appeared. Franz Hermann, Max Verstappen, whatever you want to call him, there he is climbing into his Ferrari 296 GT3. I'm sure we're all very aware of his exploits around the Nürburgring Nordschleife on iRacing, where he's incredibly fast. But to see him do it for real was very, very cool indeed. Now, later in the day, I was able to go out on track and actually share the track with him at one point. I did not meet him, but that honour went to my teammate Jimmy Braubent. I did actually get overtaken by him at one point. Now, this week, there has been a lot of discussion about the lap time Max achieved. The official lap record for this configuration in a GT3 car stands at a 7.49.5 and Max apparently achieved a 7.48. This lap time isn't going to count anyway because it was on a practice day, but it would be great to see him return in the future to see exactly what he can do up against the best in the GT3 category. I knew he was always interested in the Nürburgring, but to actually see him here doing it is really cool. So how cool is that? Max Verstappen here sharing the track with the man himself. Really, really cool to see that and hopefully he does a lot more of the same in the future. We want to see him on the grid at the Nürburgring. It would be mega. Speaking of racing, in the first race of this championship, we won the race. Got maximum points. Second race, finished second by three seconds. For the championship, that means we're tied top with FK Motorsports. Try and beat them today. Try and get back to the top of the standings. I'm going to be starting the race. Let's go and do it. Did you know that geckos have millions of tiny hairs called the setae and that allowed them for extremely high level of grip, just like the Falcon tires. They can go on slippery surface, upside down. So gecko is proudly sponsored by Falcon. Thank you very much for that, Misha. We're going to jump into the race start. I am once again behind the wheel for the opening hour of this four-hour race. Starting from pole position, this was actually one of my worst starts ever. As the cars in front were just bunching up, I'm on the brakes. The lights go green at exactly the wrong moment and unfortunately, all of the cars behind seem to get a massive slingshot, including the 187 there. I suddenly find myself down in sixth place after being first about 10 seconds ago. So really not ideal. We do have plenty of time though to try to recover the lost ground. Heading through turn one, trying to keep it nice and clean. Up behind now, the sea of BMW M4 GT4s. As we navigate into turn number three now, Porsche Cup cars all mixed in. Always the difficult thing here around the Nurburgring, trying to work out who's who. It's quite simple in our race though. Mostly the BMW M4, with an Aston Martin actually at the front of the pack. Coming through the hairpin. The tyre's not quite up to temperature yet. As we come out of the hairpin, Porsche Cup car goes up the inside. Not really too much of a problem. We're going to let them go or not fight them too much, as they are faster than us by maybe 10, 15, 20 seconds per lap. And now side by side with a Cup 3 car, which we should be quicker than. Later on in the lap, my first overtaking target came to fruition. Immediately in front of us, the GT tyre girls car, who we've battled from time to time in our SP80 category over the last couple of years. I was pushing hard to try to get this position back. Now of course, it's not easy to overtake around the Nordschleife. I was looking for a move here, coming out of the mini carousel, but it made sense to wait for the time being, with the Stöttinger Straight coming up just after this. And so it was about getting a good run through Galgenkopf here at the end of the lap, to then get into the slipstream and try to get an overtake. Let's see if we can do it. I'd done just enough to get into the slipstream range, then get the overtake done, moving me back to 5th position. I can then therefore turn my attention once again to the cars in front. And in this instance, it was the number 187, which was the car we lost to in the previous race by just a couple of seconds. So I was about five seconds off at the beginning here of the second lap. We continued to push, and as you can see here, towards the end of the lap, we were definitely a lot closer. This was a good lap, it was going in the right direction. My primary aim was to repeat what we did at the end of lap one, try to get into the slipstream range on the Stöttinger Straight, and hopefully get an overtake done in the easiest place of all. Now that was not quite what happened. I did get close, but not quite close enough. As you can see here, through the final corner of the lap, I was very much within range of going for an overtaking opportunity on the Grand Prix loop. Now if you can't get an overtake done on the Döttinger, I think the Grand Prix loop is your next best option. And so with a gap of 0.3, I'm going to try and get this done, hopefully in the next couple of corners, before we get back round to the Nordschleife, where overtaking once again becomes very difficult. Now coming through turn two, we're looking for this switchback on the exit to get the move into turn three. A bit of an oversteer moment, but the space is there. I've put myself in the mirror and he's let me go up the inside to reclaim P4. We give him a bit of space there on the apex of turn number four, and as we head into turn number five, we're going to go defensive into the hairpin, just to really seal the deal, and move fully into fourth place. We can try and put a gap on this car and move away from them as fast as possible. Now as we continue pushing at the end of lap number three, we did actually manage to put a couple of seconds between myself and the 187, which was nice to see them slowly disappear in the mirror. We had a five second gap to the car in front once again, so we had to just continue pushing, keep doing what we're doing. We have to be patient as well, with the traffic now beginning to emerge, really trying to lose minimal time. With the 187 still there lingering in the rear view mirror, I was able to keep them at bay. They were never quite close enough to really go for an overtaking opportunity, but I could see just up in the near distance, where the two cars I was trying to catch up with in second and third, there's Naston Martin there and another BMW M4. So as we fight through the slower traffic, we know that any time lost here is crucial. If you sit behind a car too long, you can easily lose two or three seconds in one corner, so we have to be as aggressive as we can realistically be. Coming down towards Brunsschen, lap number four is going to be quite an easy pass here on the exit. The 500 plus horsepower of this M4 GT4, really quite nice against the slower traffic, a lot of the time you can just push your way past on the exit of the corner. They can see on the track map there, the leader, the number 175, just coming down into Plants Garten and then just a couple of seconds back, the 155 and the 150 myself in fourth place. We continue pushing, things are going in the right direction, there's no need to go crazy just yet and burn out your tyre. With the 175 crossing the line, then the 140, then the 150, things are really close here at the front of the pack and despite the awful start, I was quite happy with the stint we've put in so far after that. Crossing the line at the end of lap four to begin the fifth lap, the two in front very much in sight now as we head down the hill towards Callenhart here. Tricky corner this, tricky section to be honest and we're going in the right direction, just continuing to get onto the back of these cars. They seem to be locked in battle, which often helps if you want to gain on them, which we are doing. Heading down the hill towards Vierseifen here, the slowest corner on the track, quite a tricky one to get right. Get that rotation, get back on the power on the exit as you head downhill. Continuing to push once more and by the end of the lap we were very much within striking range of the Aston Martin, maybe not the M4 but let's see what we can do here as we tuck into the slipstream with the Aston Martin. It's going to be a close call here because the Aston of course has the slipstream of the GT4 in front, the M4, but it's not going to be enough, it's not going to be a match for the power of the 150 as we go through into third place and we get the double slipstream here and perhaps get two moves done in one corner, in one straight, not enough here. As we begin lap number six we are very much the quicker car here in this group, so we've caught up these cars over the course of the last couple of laps. Beginning lap six now right on the front foot up against the 155, are we going to be able to get through? That is the question. So far it's not been too hard to get past the cars behind us but as the cars get a little bit quicker towards the front of the pack it's going to get a little bit harder. Now something to make things a little bit trickier was traffic, as you can see here passing some slower traffic but also having to deal with some faster traffic from behind in the name of these GT3 cars. So coming down to the Callenhart, lap number six, decide you know what I'm going to go off the line here, let them through. I think those are actually Cup 2 Porsches, not much slower than a GT3 car to be honest. Towards the end of the lap we're just looking for any opportunity where the 155 in front might just get slowed down, opting for the right decision there on the exit of Ice Curve, not an opportunity to really get past therefore. My main option really is to try and stick as close as I can and get a move done on the Dottinger once again which did not happen. I wasn't quite close enough, they had good power and I wasn't close enough in the slipstream range. So with a gap of 0.7 as we begin the seventh lap of this stint, the final lap of this stint, we are 12.1 seconds off the lead and this is where I went for perhaps my riskiest attempt at overtaking the car in front for second. Now coming up towards Kesselschen and Moot Curve is definitely an overtaking opportunity if you can get it right. We're going to go for the space on the right, half on the kerb and the grass. It's not quite going to go in our favour here as we're going to be on the outside for the left of Moot Curve so we decide to bail out. That one could have been a very bad incident and it was very close indeed as I looked out my left door. So we're going to continue, try to fight another day. Pushing, trying to look for any gap through Blansk Garten doesn't quite work out for me here. Steve is pushing the content button too hard. Yeah I was really trying everything to get this overtake done, however it was not going to happen on this occasion. At the end of the stint, bringing the car home in third place, very close of course to second, with the leader about eight seconds up the road, the number 175 Aston Martin. So overall not a bad recovery after a disaster of a start. I was happy with how it went beyond turn one and now it'll be over to Mischa to try to recover further positions in the race. That was a mega stint, that was good fun, I enjoyed that. That was some of the most fun I've had I think at the Nürburgring. Really fun stint, just pushing, lots of cars to try to pass and catch up with and we were never too far away from the lead, I think about 10 or so seconds off the leader in our class, that's not too bad. That's why he's the GOAT. Mischa, he's doing business, I mean I think it's his first time around the track so he's just learning it still but it's up to second, race start. That's it, Mischa back into the lead of the race, so the GOAT of the Nürburgring doing it again. So we have a real chance here, it's going to be a close race though because I did an 8.33, it's the fastest lap I've ever done and the other cars in our class doing like 34, 35, so it's really close. So Manny's up now, let's see what he can do. Yeah, mega stint by Mischa there to get us back to first place, over to the main man, the maestro Mr Manuel Metzger. We were now sitting in third and you may be wondering why, it's really just because we did some longer pit stops in the earlier part of the race and so we lost more time because of that. We would recover it later on when other cars would do their longer pit stops. We were losing a bit of time here through Flugplatz, just trying to manage the traffic, again it's just risk versus reward management. Sometimes you've just got to suck it up and slow down and wait and be patient. There are also sections like this, double wave yellows, code 60s, these give you opportunities to catch up but also to lose time to cars in front depending on the timing of the code 60 or the double wave yellow section. All Manny could do was just drive the road in front of him. He was doing a good job by this point now back into second place as we begin lap number 18 and actually going back to the lead, the strategy was a little bit different between our team and the others around us as Jimmy began to get ready with Misha helping him there for the final hour of the race. Great stint by Manny, away Jimmy goes to begin the final hour of the race and at this point once again back to third courtesy of the differing pit strategy, 44 seconds off of second and 1 minute 14 away from the lead. Okay guys, race update, we're in the last 45 minutes and we're in third but the top two are yet to pit. We think it's going to be really similar to the last race where the top two are going to pit, we're going to be really close with the 187 again. So they're about 1 minute 20 ahead right now, they're about to come in, we're going to see how much time they lose in the pit stop and then see what the gap is and then Jimmy's just going to have to push for this last half an hour. And he very much was pushing, we lost the second race of this championship by three seconds, it was incredibly close and so we knew that once again it would be a close call with this one trying to fight away through the traffic as quickly as possible. As we mentioned earlier, you don't want to lose any time behind slower cars with the 187 there coming out of the carousel, the 175 going through Moot Curve, we were a good 30-40 seconds behind those two but we knew that once they served their pit stop, which was coming up in a couple of laps time, it would once again be very close. In fact, here is the 175 Aston Martin coming in for their final pit stop of the race. We therefore get the job done and move up into second place with the Aston Martin still in the pit lane there. Second place pretty much secured, barring any incidents. Lots of time lost into the Stefan Bellof S, couldn't quite get past the slower car and for a part of the track like this you can't really do anything other than wait. It is excruciating losing a good three or four seconds there behind that car. The gap increases to the 187 which eventually comes in for their pit stop, their last pit stop of the race and this therefore is a crucial moment in this battle with Jimmy completing lap number 24, heading in towards lap 25 with only three laps left to go in this race. This was the crucial moment. Who would come out in front? The 187 leaves the pit box and it is going to be them. By a matter of only five seconds we are in second place. All Jimmy could do here was continue pushing and see if we can get that gap down. Oh my god, this is stressful man. I don't want to lose another race by three seconds and I wasn't about to because unfortunately we couldn't quite catch up with the 187. They had some really good pace at this latter phase of the race. I don't feel like the traffic fell our way as well but as we watched on in anticipation of hopefully Jimmy catching up it wasn't quite to be on this occasion and so at the end of lap 27, the final lap of the race, they cross the line in the lead and a matter of about seven or eight seconds later Jimmy comes through to cross the line to finish in second place and it is very much a luxury to say that finishing second was frustrating but after finishing only three seconds off last time it was quite a disappointing end to this race. For the same team again by such a short gap, twice in a row, I can't help but think what could have been different if I had started a bit better. Another second place, I mean it's quite good that we're a bit frustrated with P2 these days but it was a really good battle. 187 just was too quick for us and maybe with a better start we could have got that win but it was a great race, great battle and second place. We're gonna have to come back for the N24 qualifier in a couple of weeks and try to get back that P1 because we've not finished P1 now for a few rounds but guys thank you so much for watching, really hope you enjoyed this one and I'll see you next time. Goodbye.