F1 Today: Verstappen suffers Nürburgring heartbreak as driver loses racing licence

Verstappen and the Winward racing outfit were left to rue what could have been another race victory, after a technical failure saw him lose out on the lead during the NLS5 race at the Nürburgring.

The four-time Formula 1 champion, who had recovered from the challenging qualifying his team experienced to take the lead of the race and stretched his advantage to over 30 seconds, witnessed his lead disappear as he was forced into the pits.

The Mercedes-AMG GT3 car suffered damage to its splitter, which required over 28 minutes for the #3 crew to fix. After successfully resolving the issue with the car, Verstappen’s teammate, Lucas Auer, took to the track. However, the Austrian driver could only finish in 39th place, two laps down on the lead lap and eventual race winner Ben Green, who drove the Audi R8 LMS GT3 evo II.

The Nürburgring stewards took a hard-line stance against Porsche driver Oleksandr Kosohov, opting to strip him of his licence, exclude him from the event, and hand a heavy penalty to his team.

The Nürburgring Qualifiers weekend came to a swift end for the Mühlner Motorsport driver after a serious offence in the first of the two qualifying races prompted officials to take firm action.

Kosohov was caught passing through a double yellow flag zone at 201 km/h, in an area where the maximum permitted speed was just 60 km/h.

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