NLS 6, a strong but short weekend!
We’re on the road again for the 6th weekend of the NLS 2025. After not having raced on the Nordschleife for a while, I’m looking forward to tackling The Green Hell again. This weekend, instead of the usual 4‑hour race, we have a 6‑hour race. To complete the team for this longer race, we get a 4th driver, English talent Harry Barton.
The weekend starts out very nicely with a fun gadget from InformAR on Thursday evening. They provided us with the Matterport Pro2 3D camera so we can 3D scan our pit box on the Ring. This means that soon we can give a virtual pitbox tour of the Nordschleife even without someone visiting in person.
Friday:
This day is all about testing for the race. It’s a chance to get into your rhythm, check the car, make sure the setup feels right, and that everything is as it should be. A great bonus of this test session is that a passenger is allowed to ride along!
You can take someone with you in the official test session at full racing speed around the Nordschleife. This weekend, Patrick and Patricia from Cornelis Carrosserie were visiting. As active supporters from the C1, the Fiesta, and now NLS, they have been to the circuit many times. Taking Patrick for a lap was extra fun!
Additionally, my best friend and part of the racing since 2021, Koen, also took a lap over The Green Hell. Besides training, it’s incredibly cool to give such experiences to partners and friends.
After the laps in training, I still had some comments about the car’s behavior. It wasn’t what I expected. The team went to work hard, and my engineer Panti eventually found and fixed the problem. So we’re ready for qualifying!!
Saturday:
I wake up calmly at 06:45 and look outside. The window is fogged and I can’t see far—or so I think… the fog is so thick you can’t see more than a few meters… welcome to the Nürburgring, typical German Eifel weather. Because the marshals can’t see each other from their posts, qualifying is not allowed to start. So it’s just waiting until the fog lifts.
It takes a long time; there’s barely any wind and no sunshine to help. Every half hour, race control decides we must wait even longer. It MUST be safe, otherwise it can’t happen! But after a few hours, there’s finally good news! At 11:50 the message comes that we can race — there’s enough visibility!
Because of all the delay, a new schedule is made: 40 minutes of qualifying at 12:00 and 4 hours and 30 minutes of racing with the start at 14:00. At the moment the news comes out, we only have 10 minutes before qualifying begins. We quickly get ready!
Due to the mist, the track is damp, but with confidence in myself, I choose slicks anyway. The plan: survive the first 2 laps and set a “banker lap” (a time that ensures you have something on the board if anything happens). The team manager breaks in to the strategy and says that because of the tricky conditions, I must push immediately. There will surely be yellow flags and Code 60 situations. Go for it!
The light turns green and I drive onto the track — and as planned, that’s exactly what we do. The track is wetter than expected, but because of the huge distance you cover, it can be wet in the pits and sunny and dry further around the circuit. Fortunately, that’s the case — I know that I must get through this lap. After this lap, we are P3, nearly 9 seconds behind P1. I come into the pits, we check the tire pressures, and discuss strategy. We decide to go back out on the short circuit only.
Knowing that it’s getting dryer, I must wait for the signal from my engineer. There are several yellow flags and Code 60 zones on the circuit — in these zones you are not allowed to go faster than 60 km/h, which costs a lot of time. I do some laps alone on the GP circuit (there’s a bypass you can use so your qualifying lap doesn’t start on the full 24 km track as a warm‑up), and after I get the signal from my engineer, I push and give everything I’ve got — of course making sure I keep the car on the track.
The lap goes well and the pace is strong. Here and there are some wet patches, but the car feels good and I feel good too. At the end of my lap, I cross the finish and ask my engineer how the lap time was. It was a pretty exciting lap, so it’s amazing to hear that I’m P1. POLE POLE POLE, with a huge gap of no less than 23 seconds! A good lap combined with perfect teamwork delivered a superb result.
The race:
As usual, we have a team meeting, and this time I will drive the 2nd stint. Due to the tight schedule, spectators are not allowed on the start grid — everything has to move quickly. I still stand by the car on the grid to wish my teammate good luck. Once everyone is off the grid, the three starting groups leave one at a time with an interval of one minute. We start in group 3 and go first for the warm‑up lap.
On the last long straight of the warm‑up lap, the group bunches together and creeps toward the starting line. It’s a rolling start, and when the light turns green, it’s full gas and we go. We get off to a good start. We lose a few places, but in our class we’re still in P1.
I’m in the lounge eating when I see our car come in on the livestream. Shortly after the start, there was contact and the rear bumper is damaged. The team repairs it quickly and we can go back on track. We do lose some time, but because of the mandatory total pitstop time, not too much. For this race, we must be in the pit lane for a total of 12 minutes, and now we just have to ensure the remaining pit stops stay within that window. So it’s going to be hard work for the team to make the next stops a bit faster.
The race progresses, and waiting in the pit box our engineer suddenly turns around and says: “the race is over, the car is crashed”…….. this is very shocking and a huge disappointment! So much hard work and time is undone in an instant. My teammate had a touch with another car and went into the wall, and the car is heavily damaged. It’s incredibly frustrating after a good qualifying and starting position for the race. There is still talk of trying to get the car back to the pit box, perhaps to try to repair the damage… But then a photo of the car comes in. And it’s clear — there is no possibility of racing this car in this event.
Unfortunately, that’s part of the sport. It can always happen. It’s very disappointing, and a big let‑down. But we’ll be there for the next race. New round, new opportunities!