Gran Turismo World Series commentator Jimmy Broadbent and well-known GT streamer Steve “Super GT” Brown were part of a team that scored a class victory at the first event of the 2024 Nurburgring Endurance Series (Nurburgring Langstrecken-Serie, or NLS), racing a GT4-category BMW M4.
The duo were joined by Nurburgring streamer Misha Charoudin and former N24 winner Manuel Metzger for the double-header NLS1 and NLS2 races over the weekend of April 6/7. Both were four-hour races at the Nurburgring Endurance layout — combining the Nordschleife with the Sprint track at the GP circuit.
All four drivers will be racing across the full season in the Bilstein-sponsored, Black Falcon-run M4 Gen II which slots into the special SP8T category for GT4 race cars that don’t have full SRO homologation — with the SRO cars running in the SP10 class.
The first of the two races didn’t go entirely to plan however. Heading towards the end of his stint in the third hour, Brown suffered a tire blowout at one of the worst moments possible: flat chat down Dottinger Hohe. Describing it as a 277km/h (172mph) incident, Brown was able to bring the car back largely unscathed but a damaged control arm resulted in retirement.
With the M4 repaired for the next day’s race it was Broadbent — already a real-world motorsport champion through victory in the Praga Cup — starting the car after missing out on his stint in NLS1. Brown though was center of attention again, courtesy of a late-race pass on the class-leading WS Racing M4 driven by Beitske Visser, herself also a sim racer for BMW squad BS+Competition.
The overtake came, remarkably, at the Wippermann corner — better known for its appearance in myriad YouTube videos as the scene of some chaotic Touristfahrten moments — on the penultimate lap, with Brown sneaked past between the two right-handers and into a class lead he’d not surrender.
Overall the team managed a 21st place finish, on the same lap as the SRO GT4-class winning Aston Martin of Dorr Motorsport, the Cup3-winning Porsche Cayman GT4 of Avia W&S Motorsport, and the Toyo Tires team Toyota Supra GT4. The overall victory went to the Manthey Porsche by just 0.042s after the Red Bull Team Abt Lamborghini Huracan surrendered the lead trying to save fuel and prevent having to start another lap.
The team will be racing in all six rounds of the NLS this year, as well as the Nurburgring 24 Hours and its qualifying races. You can catch all the action live on the official Nurburgring YouTube channel, with English and German commentaries.
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