Comtoyou Aston wins at the Nürburgring as Winward seal the Endurance Cup

The #007 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin won the Nürburgring three-hour race, and four places behind it the 2026 GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup was decided.

Marco Sørensen, Mattia Drudi and Nicki Thiim converted their morning pole into victory, with Thiim crossing the line 0.490 seconds ahead of the Garage 59 McLaren. Fourth place was enough for Lucas Auer, Maro Engel and Luca Stolz in the #48 Winward Mercedes-AMG, who are Endurance Cup champions with one round still to run.

Comtoyou turn pole into a half-second win

Sørensen, Drudi and Thiim were fastest in qualifying with a 1:53.591 and then did the harder part. Three hours later the margin at the line was under half a second, over the Garage 59 McLaren of Loake, Macdonald and Kirchhoefer. A post-race penalty then dropped that car to eleventh, promoting the #32 WRT BMW of Pepper, Weerts and Van der Linde to second.

It is the kind of result that flatters nobody. Pole to victory in an endurance race means the pit stops, the stint lengths and the driver changes all had to hold up, and at under half a second there was no room anywhere.

Winward seal the Endurance Cup by a single point of margin

Auer, Engel and Stolz came to the Nürburgring on 74 points, 41 clear of Sørensen, Drudi and Thiim on 33. Fourth place in a three-hour race is worth 12 points, which puts the Winward trio on 86. The race win plus the class pole point lifted the Comtoyou crew to 59.

That leaves 27 points between them. The Endurance Cup finale at Portimão in October is a three-hour race, worth 25 for the win and one more for pole — a maximum of 26.

Twenty-seven against twenty-six. The title is mathematically secure by a single point, which is about as close as a champion can cut it.

What Winward have won, and what they have not

This is the Endurance Cup, not the GT World Challenge Europe title. The two are easy to confuse and the broadcast graphic that read CHAMPIONS – OVERALL DRIVERS will not have helped, because “overall” there means the outright category rather than the season as a whole.

GT World Challenge Europe runs as two five-round series, the Sprint Cup and the Endurance Cup, with points from both combined into an overall championship. What was settled at the Nürburgring is the Endurance half of it.

The overall title is still open. Auer and Engel lead it on 114.5 points from Ricardo Feller and Bastian Buus on 77, with Zandvoort, Barcelona and Portimão — five races — still to come. If you want the full breakdown of how the two cups fit together, we have set it out in GT World Challenge Europe explained.

Nürburgring three-hour race, the podium

1. #007 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin — Sørensen / Drudi / Thiim
2. #32 Team WRT BMW — Pepper / Weerts / Van der Linde
3. #3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing — Juncadella / Lulham / Gounon

The Garage 59 McLaren of Joseph Loake, Dean Macdonald and Marvin Kirchhoefer crossed the line second but was classified eleventh after a post-race penalty, which is why the order above differs from the one you may have seen live.

The #48 Winward Mercedes-AMG took the fourth place it needed for the title. The full classification had not been published by the series at the time of writing; the finishing order above is as reported by Sportscar365. We will replace it with the official version once it appears.

The rest of the Nürburgring weekend

The GT World Challenge round shared the bill with the GT3 Revival Series, and that produced a weekend of its own. Christoph von Oeynhausen won both races in the #888 BMW Z4 GT3, while Jean-Luc Beaubelique recovered from a first-lap retirement on Saturday to second in Pro-Am on Sunday and now leads that championship by 51 points.

Our full weekend guide, including the timetable and both days of results, is in the Nürburgring round guide.

Photos: SRO Motorsports