Nurburgring 24 Hours 2026: Watch Top Qualifying LIVE as Max Verstappen bids for pole today

Max Verstappen drives at the Nurburgring in the wet — Photo: © IMAGO

Nurburgring 24 Hours

Nurburgring 24 Hours 2026: Watch Top Qualifying LIVE as Max Verstappen bids for pole today

Watch live as the mighty Dutchman bids for pole in Germany

Graham Shaw Consultant Editor

Digital sports specialist running global brands for 30 years

Friday 15 May 2026 08:45 Updated: 16:00

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Top Qualifying for the Nurburgring 24 Hours race is now complete and the grid for Saturday's race is set - you can click here for a full report and results.

Max Verstappen will bid for pole position today (Friday May 15) at the Nurburgring 24 Hours race, and you can watch every second of his Top Qualifying progress live with GPFans.

The four-time F1 world champion saw limited action on Thursday, notably in an evening Qualifying session which was hampered by heavy rain in the Eifel region of Germany. He did manage to complete the one timed lap which means he is now eligible for overnight stints in the race proper.

Today things get really serious with the Dutchman and his Mercedes-AMG GT3 team-mates fighting for grid positions ahead of Saturday's race proper.

Top Qualifying gets under way at 0915 UK (1015 CET, 0415 Eastern) and concludes with Top Qualifying 3 and the pole shootout at 1235 UK (1335 UK, 0735 Eastern). We also have another Qualifying session (essentially like Free Practice in F1) in between.

The actual 24 Hours race gets under way at 2pm UK time on Saturday (3pm CET, 9am Eastern) and runs through to the same time on Sunday.

Nurburgring 24 Hours: Rules and regulations as Max Verstappen races into action

Watch Top Qualifying Live Today

You can watch every second of the action live without leaving GPFans, just click on the embed below:

How do Qualifying and Top Qualifying work?

The three Qualifying sessions are purely free practice for Verstappen and his GT3 competitors; they only determine the grid for the lower classes.

The starting grid for SP 9 (GT3, including Verstappen), SP 11* (GT2), AT1, SP-Pro, and SP-X is determined in Top Qualifying, which is also divided into three different sessions.

Top Qualifying 1 on Friday morning lasts half an hour, and all 49 cars from SP 9, AT1, SP-Pro, and SP-X are expected to participate. The top 20 progress to Top Qualifying 2, which starts almost immediately after the end of TQ1, pretty similar to Q1 and Q2in F1.

Top Qualifying 2 also lasts half an hour, before the top 7 cars then proceed to Top Qualifying 3, but 12 cars in total participate in that session. This is because five teams have already secured a spot in TQ3. Those five teams do not have to (but may, if they wish) participate in TQ1 and TQ2.

It’s important to note that Verstappen DOES NOT have a spot guaranteed for TQ3, so his team will need to compete in all three Top Qualifying sessions.

Pole shootout, and who got guaranteed TQ3 spots?

Top Qualifying 3 is a pole shootout in which the 12 drivers are each allowed to complete two timed laps. Gaps are created between the cars to minimise the chance of drivers holding each other up.

The five cars already definitely in TQ3 are as follows:

1. #45-Ferrari van Realize Kondo Racing with Rinaldi
2. #16-Audi van Scherer Sport PHX
3. #47-Mercedes-AMG from KCMG
4. #1-BMW van ROWE Racing
5. #84-Lamborghini van Red Bull Team ABT

The seven remaining spots in TQ3 are therefore for the seven fastest teams from TQ2.

The five cars already safely into TQ3 are there because of their performances in the earlier races of the NLS and in the 24 Hours Qualifiers. Three spots were awarded to the cars with the theoretical best lap times from the qualifying and races of NLS1, NLS2, and NL3; one spot was awarded to the car with the theoretical best lap time from qualifying in the 24h Qualifiers; and one spot was awarded to the car with the theoretical best lap time from the races in the 24 Hours Qualifiers.

One other important thing to note here is that no one driver may participate in more than one Top Qualifying session. So Verstappen for example could not participate in TQ1 and TQ3.

Verstappen and his Mercedes team bid for pole today.

Nurburgring 24 Hours Qualifying Schedule

The schedule for Qualifying this week looks like this (all times are UK):

Session	Day	Time (UK)	Duration
Top Qualifying 1	Friday, May 15	09:15 - 09:45	30 minutes
Top Qualifying 2	Friday, May 15	10:05 - 10:35	30 minutes
Third Qualifying	Friday, May 15	11:00 - 12:05	1 hour and 5 minutes
Top Qualifying 3	Friday, May 15	12:35 - 13:35	1 hour

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Written by

Graham Shaw - Consultant Editor

Digital sports leader with 30 years of senior level experience running global brands. Built sportinglife.com to be a behemoth in the UK as well as being in charge of the Planet Sport network of sites including planetf1.com, football365.com, teamtalk.com and planetrugby.com. Then grew goal.com to be the world's biggest soccer website in 18 languages and 37 territories. Was GM of Portals for Perform Group (now DAZN) with overall responsibility for sportingnews.com, spox.de and voetbalzone.nl.

View full biography

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