Mercedes issue official statement after shock Max Verstappen disqualification

Mercedes has released a statement following Max Verstappen and his team-mates’ disqualification from Saturday’s NLS2 at the Nordschleife.

Verstappen, Dani Juncadella, and Jules Gounon had secured a crushing victory by 59 seconds in a Mercedes GT3 before being disqualified several hours after the four-hour race had concluded.

Following post-race inspections, it was discovered that seven sets of tyres had been used during the race — one more than the permitted maximum of six.

As a result, Verstappen’s 100% GT3 victory record has been broken, marking a miserable March after his retirement from the Chinese Grand Prix.

The official statement from Stefan Wendl, Head of Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing read: "The NLS weekend will remain in our memories for a long time: we saw pure racing on the track, experienced an extraordinary day in terms of atmosphere and were initially delighted with the supposed race victory. 

"The disappointment was all the greater when we realised that we had made a mistake behind the scenes that morning and the race organisers were forced to disqualify the winning car. That hurts, and naturally everyone involved is very disappointed. 

"It shows once again that you can only win on the Nordschleife if everything comes together. Winward Racing, who managed the deployment of the two Performance cars, were competing in this line-up for the first time in the NLS. 

"Now we need to analyse the mistakes, whilst also taking the positive lessons from the weekend on board and focusing on the remaining preparatory races as well as the 24-hour race."