► Why nothing is ever guaranteed at the Nürburgring
► We attend 2025 race with Team Bulldog Mini entry
► Is N24 the greatest circuit endurance race of all?
One minute you’re running P2 in one of the world’s toughest endurance races, chasing down the lead car for eternal Nürburgring 24hr glory. The next, you’re blinded by brilliant bright lights – unavoidable, inescapable – their familiar outlined blurred in the insect-peppered windscreen.
No matter how hard you pile on the brake pedal, their dazzling form sucks you in until the moment of impact. Bang – the game is up. Porsche on Porsche to make matters worse. Blue on Blue. A meagre limp back to the pits, a dream gone for another year. Welcome to endurance racing, Nordschleife style.
I’m attending this year’s race (scheduled later in the calendar than normal) right after the weekend of Le Mans. And while both may be gruelling feats of endurance spanning an entire day and contended by some of the world’s greatest manufacturers, each feels markedly different.
The retirement of a car isn’t uncommon in 24-hour races – far from it – but the circumstances in which the incident above happened highlight that the Nürburgring is perhaps – of all the 24-hour events – the biggest battle of attrition.
Heavy braking into T1 is followed by a quick right-left, the latter part of which being partially obscured by a tyre barrier. This meant that Julian Andlauer – a promising Porsche factory driver and one that was racing the 963 Hypercar at Le Mans the prior weekend – was unsighted and made contact with Stefan Kiefer’s stranded 911 Cup car.
What followed was a nerve-jangling few minutes as cars of all categories dodged recovery vehicles and marshals on track in a manner that you simply would not see at Le Mans – or any other 24-hour race for that matter. Motorsport is and always will be dangerous, but at times the N24 feels like a throwback. More than ever, simply making it through the distance is a colossal achievement no matter who you are or what you’re racing.
Team principal of Bulldog Racing, Alexander Schabbach, knows this only too well. ‘For us, we just try and survive for the first 23 hours and then in the final hour we will see.’ Running a Mini John Cooper Works Pro in the SP 3T category, he knows that his car doesn’t have the outright pace of rival Golf GTIs, CUPRA TCRs and BMW M2s (its fastest lap is a whopping 32 seconds off), so they have to take a different tactic.
Speaking of his rivals, ‘we know they are fast, but it’s no good if they break down halfway through’. Having started the Bulldog team in 2022, Alex has already overseen class victory at last year’s truncated 24-hour race and knows that the Mini gives him a fighting chance.
He explains that he picked the car because of a childhood memory of his mother taking him to school in a classic Mini beloved by him and his classmates. And while the latest F66 model shares little with its ancestor, it’s still more than capable of punching above its weight. I don’t get a chance to see it first hand, but am assured that the little hatchback has one of the loudest cold starts in the paddock. And that’s saying something…
The car, Alex explains, is mostly stock with the biggest changes made in the name of safety (roll-cage, fire extinguisher etc). There’s a decent-sized rear diffuser, a 100-litre tank (that lasts around eight or nine laps) and around 250bhp on tap from the 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine. In total, the conversion to racing car took around 400-500 hours and once again it’ll contend this year’s race and aim for class glory.
Charlie Cooper – Global Brand Ambassador for Mini and part of the winning driver line-up at last year’s race – shows us around the Team Bulldog bus that’s here to support the drivers and crew over race week. He explains that, as the race is later in the calendar this year, music festival season has started and that the team’s usual double-decker Bruce Springsteen spec coach is unavailable.
Inside the Mini Team Bulldog race HQ at Nurburgring 24hr
Inside, it’s a touch cramped but nicely appointed space. Bunk beds left and right, TVs, PlayStations, a toilet and shower plus a ‘media suite’ at the far end. It’s not as glitzy or plush as the countless pantechnicons lining the paddocks of Le Mans, but then neither is the N24 as a whole.
The paddock is wide open to spectators. Team mechanics wielding slick-shod race wheels and millionaire factory drivers fight their way through hordes of ‘Ring fanatics desperate for a glance at their heroes. In the early hours of the night, floodlit garages take on a Mad Max, dystopian vibe.
Bleary-eyed pit crews covered in the grease and grime of pitlane dramas and on-track toils, fuelled by Red Bull and burger van catering lie prone across rare pockets of floor space. Ravaged by fatigue, not even the constant thump of German techno music can stave off brief visits to the land of nod between pit stops. Makeshift repairs are going on elsewhere, shredded carbon and mangled metal bodged back into something resembling their original form. Anything to finish.
Out on track, factory-backed BMWs and Porsches dodge recovery vehicles, ambulances and Dacias all the while maintaining eyes on stalks for the next yellow flag zone or Code 60. The penalty for transgressions is usually severe.
It’s a bare-knuckle slog to the line and one that is truly unlike any other. The phrase ‘to finish first, first you have to finish’ has never been more applicable. In the end, a 100-second penalty for Kevin Estre’s Porsche 911 hands overall victory to the only factory-backed BMW M4 taking part in this year’s race, but what of the plucky Bulldog Racing MINI some 30-odd seconds off the pace of the class leaders? P2. A podium against the odds. Again.