ADAC Nordrhein backs down, and its new Nordschleife series slips to 2028

ADAC Nordrhein has postponed its planned 24h Nürburgring Series by a year, to 2028. The organiser of the Nürburgring 24 Hours took that decision after a round of talks with the NLS and with the teams’ association ILN, encouraged by the DMSB and by ADAC head office in Munich.

It is being presented as a timing problem. It is a retreat, and the number that forced it is not a threat or a lawsuit. It is a headcount.

The teams who fill half the grid said no

The ILN, the Interessengemeinschaft Langstrecke Nürburgring, is not a lobby group operating from outside. It is the grid. Its members field more than 70 race cars in the NLS this season, over half the entry, and more than 70 at the 24 Hours, roughly 45 per cent of the starters. The association was set up on Olaf Manthey’s initiative in December 2015 and has been a registered association since August 2018. Martin Rosorius chairs it, with Nicolas Raeder of Manthey as his deputy.

When a group with that footprint says a second series is unworkable, it does not need to threaten anything. It only has to decline.

Rosorius has been consistent since July. “Two racing series competing in parallel for the limited dates available on the Nürburgring Nordschleife make no sense from the perspective of the teams,” he said then, arguing that the result would weaken everyone involved and reduce the number of high-calibre endurance races on the circuit. His summary was blunter: no to division, yes to dialogue, and yes to joint development.

On the postponement itself he was unambiguous that an additional rival series would do far more harm than good, and made a point that lands harder than any of the commercial arguments: the Nürburgring’s anniversary year should not be defined by competition and uncertainty. The circuit opened in June 1927. Next season is its centenary.

Hornung calls it timing, the paddock will call it something else

ADAC Nordrhein took the diplomatic exit. Walter Hornung, race director of the 24 Hours, framed the delay as a scheduling problem rather than a defeat. “Unfortunately, the preparation time for introducing a new series format was too short for many racing teams, partners, and sponsors,” he said, adding that the club still believes its concept is sound and that it has received a good deal of positive feedback.

He also left the door open. Hornung wants the conversations to continue towards 2028, in his words to create the best possible platform for teams, drivers and Nordschleife fans.

Whether that framing survives contact with the paddock is another matter. The proposal had real incentives attached, including reduced entry fees for teams committing to the full season and guaranteed grid places for the 24 Hours. Those carrots are off the table until at least 2028.

The fight underneath this one goes back to 2023

The postponement is a concession, not a resolution, and the reason is that none of this was ever really about a series. It is about who controls dates on the Nordschleife.

In 2023 the circuit owner, NR Holding, refused to allocate NLS dates. The VLN went to court, relying on the 2013 Nürburgring law that requires the venue to allocate dates without discrimination. A court effectively treated the circuit as critical infrastructure, comparable to a utility network, and that position was confirmed in the main proceedings in 2025. That ruling is the reason the NLS still has a calendar at all.

The same year, the Nürburgring and the AvD launched a rival championship of their own, the Nürburgring Endurance Series. It did not survive. A challenger series on this circuit has now failed twice before turning a wheel, which is a pattern rather than a coincidence.

Seen against that history, ADAC Nordrhein’s plan reads less like innovation and more like insurance. A series of its own would have given the club a permanent claim on Nordschleife dates regardless of how the wider argument over allocation settles. We wrote about that power play at the end of August, and nothing that has happened since has changed the shape of it.

The 2027 calendar answers the question teams actually asked

The retreat arrived alongside the thing teams had been asking for all along: a calendar they can budget against. The NLS will run eight races across seven weekends in 2027, and all eight count towards the championship.

The provisional 2027 NLS calendar. All eight races score for the championship.

One line in that calendar matters more than the dates. From 2027 the two 24h Qualifier races no longer count towards the NLS championship. Those races belong to ADAC Nordrhein’s programme, and they are now formally outside the NLS title fight.

ADAC Nordrhein keeps its own 2027 schedule intact: the 24h Prologue from 2 to 4 April, the 24h Qualifiers from 30 April to 2 May with two four-hour races, and the ADAC RAVENOL 24h Nürburgring from 27 to 30 May.

Our view: a truce about dates, not a settlement about power

Two things happened here, and only one of them was reported as news.

The first is the postponement, which is straightforwardly good for teams. Budgets, driver contracts and sponsor commitments for 2027 can now be signed against a known calendar instead of against a guess. In a paddock where a single GT3 programme runs into seven figures, certainty is worth more than any amount of vision.

The second is the quieter one. The 24h Qualifiers leaving the NLS championship is the two camps separating their assets. That is not what organisations do when they are about to merge. It is what they do when they expect to negotiate, and want to know exactly what each side owns before they sit down. The ILN’s stated ambition is a single professional structure covering both the 24 Hours and the endurance series. The direction of travel in the 2027 calendar is the opposite of that.

So the honest reading is that nobody lost. ADAC Nordrhein kept its concept alive and bought 18 months. The ILN got the year it demanded. The NLS got a calendar. What nobody got is an answer to the question that has been driving all of it since 2023, which is who decides what runs on the Nordschleife and when.

Eighteen months of structured talks might produce something everyone can live with. The alternative is that this same conversation happens again in the summer of 2027, with the same participants, and with the centenary season as the backdrop rather than the excuse.

What to watch between now and 2028

Three things. Whether the DMSB and ADAC head office stay involved, because they are the only parties with authority over both sides. Whether the 24h Qualifiers keep their entries now that they no longer pay championship points. And whether ADAC Nordrhein comes back in 2028 with the same concept or a joint one, because those are very different outcomes dressed in the same language.

RNT-Motorsports is at the Nürburgring this weekend for the NLS double header, with the full entry list for Saturday’s race already online.