[Photo Journal] Nuerburgring 24h 2026

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16-17 May 2026.

Spent most of the weekend at Nürburgring, watching the annual 24h endurance race. This was my first visit, with the event ticket gifted to my 28-year-old self in the beginning of the year. It was an endurance test on my equipment and myself too: how the camera operates in cold wind; how I can fragment sleep and move preemptively between photo spots (and safely drive the 800km to and from Rhineland Palatinate).

All these photos were captured handheld. Tracking fast cars is like an iterative process, and the few flow state sessions I experienced while surrounded by straight-cut exhaust sounds made it an exquisite experience.

(LinkedIn-facing summary)

It was something to be standing next to the famous Bruennenchen corner fence in otherwise darkness and see headlamps light up the mountainside every 10 seconds (unless it’s an Audi). Nürburgring is to me many things, a track I see in many video games, a marketing ploy that connects with me (Nordschleife time of production cars), and a cultural icon that is arguably within a few hours’ comfortable drive away.

I guess I meant to write more, but that would be again dancing around a unproductive discussion of the nature of my photographic undertaking (how it’s worse than the Media-badged pros but maybe better than most bystander photos of the event), and ruin the fun again of just doing it.

Or I’d be lamenting missing the real drama on the track. I spent most of the 24 hours GP-side where pit stops happen and cars get fixed, after crashes and malfunctions elsewhere on the track. I was sleeping in my car when the Number 3 Red Bull returned with a broken rear axle and lost the lead, for example… Watching the livestream drained my data plan for the month so after midnight I really didn’t follow the race from counting who passed in front of me.

At the risk of sounding still fatigued from the trip — I am writing 2 weeks after — of course I cheered for the meme-grassroots team that entered a Dacia, which, trackworthiness parts included, might be cheaper than one wheel of the Porsche 992 GT3 R, but managed to finish the race. And I rememebred to shout out to the #320 Wolf Oil Porsche 992 GT3 Cup … If I had 500k Euros, this is the paint job I want on my own Porsche, up to a close match of the FWPhys colours.

And of course shoutout to the BMW M-Motorsports factory team for installing a custom-aero snail shell over a M4 GT3 to make the world’s most fierce touring car… Though the current generation M3/M4’s front fascia design still to me firmly belongs in the bucket of “ugly”.