24h Nurburgring: 50th Anniversary Race Runs This Weekend

The world's most difficult endurance race is underway in Germany. Here's where to watch.

The Nurburgring Nordschleife is easily the most difficult, dangerous, and plain badass racetrack in the world. Draped across the Eifel mountains in western Germany the 15.7-mile track is narrow and winding with blind high-speed corners and elevation changes galore. This weekend sees the 50th anniversary running of the 24 hour endurance race at the Green Hell.

With Lamborghini Huracan GT3 cars sharing the track with Mini Coopers and near-stock BMWs there's huge potential for all sorts of racing hijinks. Couple that with notoriously changeable weather and a track so big that parts can be soaked with rain while others remain dry and the 24h Nurburgring has all the makings of a classic year in year out. There's rain forecast for later today and into the night and we challenge you to watch these cars' onboard cameras during a nighttime rain storm and tell us these aren't the bravest drivers in the world.

A Hugely Varied Field
The field of 137 cars features everything from amateur-run home-built racers to factory GT3 efforts from Audi, Mercedes-AMG, Porsche, and BMW. There are also spec series featuring Porsche Cayman GT4s, KTM XBOWs, and the BMW M240i Racing Cup. This year the AT class features cars powered by alternative fuels for the first time.

Camping's a big part of the N24's charm with race fans staked out along the course eating, drinking, and partying, often through downpours and storms as the racecars thunder round the track. This year there's also a memorial exhibition about "Queen of the Nurburgring" Sabine Schmitz who won the race in 1996 and 1997.

Luckily for us the whole race as well as onboard feeds from many of the fastest cars are streamed on YouTube throughout the weekend. Grab your popcorn and enjoy the racing below.

Images by ADAC Nordrhein Sportpresse licensed by CC BY 2.0.

James Walker is an Automotive Journalist at Torque News focusing on Lucid Motors. If it's got wheels he's interested, and he's looking forward to seeing what kind of cars the EV revolution brings us. Whether it's fast, slow, new, or old, James wants to have a look around it and share it in print and on video, ideally with some twisty roads involved. You can connect with James on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.