Mercedes #3 retires from Nürburgring 24 Hours after driveshaft failure
Dani Juncadella has dismissed any suggestion that the contact between Max Verstappen and Maro Engel earlier in the race was responsible for the technical retirement suffered by the Mercedes #3 car during the Nürburgring 24 Hours.
The Spanish driver was behind the wheel when the Mercedes-AMG entry, which had been comfortably leading the race, was forced into retirement following a driveshaft failure. The setback marked a bitter end for a car that had looked extremely competitive throughout one of the most demanding endurance events on the motorsport calendar.
“We were doing everything perfectly, but the Green Hell had other plans,” Jules Gounon admitted, unable to hide his disappointment after the technical issue ended the race for the Mercedes #3 crew while Juncadella was driving.
The 24 Hours of Nürburgring once again attracted huge crowds, with more than 350,000 spectators attending the legendary German endurance event. Among the biggest attractions was four-time Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen, who impressed with a series of outstanding stints during the race.
The Dutch driver delivered an exceptional performance, especially during the opening stages and throughout the night, where he found himself battling closely with Maro Engel. The two drivers even made contact during one of the intense on-track fights, leading some observers to speculate whether that incident could have contributed to the later mechanical failure suffered by the Mercedes.
However, Dani Juncadella made it clear that he does not believe there is any connection between the earlier contact and the eventual driveshaft failure that forced the car out of contention.
“No, I don’t think so. It was something that happened many hours earlier,” the Spanish driver explained. “It’s simply motorsport, these things happen. Unfortunately today it happened to us, but I don’t think there’s anyone to blame.”
Juncadella then detailed the sequence of events that led to the retirement of the Mercedes-AMG machine.
“I came out of the pits and everything seemed fine, but after about half or one-third of the lap I started seeing an intermittent failure message appearing on the dashboard. I reset the message and everything looked okay again, but then I realised that the ABS wasn’t working, so I was driving without ABS.”
Despite the issue, the Spaniard initially believed the situation was still manageable behind the wheel.
“Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Somehow I was still able to manage it. I adjusted the brake balance slightly to try to avoid locking the front wheels and the car was still driveable. I had the impression that they wanted me to come back into the pits to identify the problem, but I thought it was better to continue and maybe understand what we could do.”
The situation then rapidly worsened as additional symptoms began to appear on the car.
“Then I started hearing noises and, obviously, the car became impossible to drive. I had the feeling that at some point something was going to break. So I slowly returned to the pits and we discovered a problem with the driveshaft, which then caused some collateral damage to the rest of the car.”
According to Juncadella, the mechanical failure also triggered a series of electronic issues that further complicated the situation for the Mercedes team.
“That’s probably what created the issue with the electronics, which became confused and disabled the ABS,” he concluded.
The retirement was a painful blow for Mercedes-AMG, especially considering the pace shown by the #3 entry throughout the race. Until the technical problem emerged, the car had looked capable of fighting for victory at one of the toughest endurance races in the world.
Leave a Reply