- Verstappen devised a GT3 dirty-air trick at Nordschleife that veterans missed.
- Juncadella, a seasoned GT3 and WEC driver, confirmed the technique exists.
- Winward Racing heads to the Nürburgring 24 Hours carrying a secret.
Max Verstappen did something at the Nurburgring Nordschleife on March 21 that even the most experienced GT3 drivers in the paddock had never thought of doing.
Nobody outside his team knows exactly what it was. And for now, his teammate is keeping it that way.
Dani Juncadella, the 34-year-old Spanish GT3 veteran who shared the #3 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Verstappen and Jules Gounon at the 58th ADAC Barbarossapreis, let the secret slip just far enough to make everyone want to know more.
The race that set the stage
Verstappen started the race from pole, and the opening lap wasted no time in delivering a fight. Christopher Haase, driving the Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II for Scherer Sport PHX, used the long Döttinger Höhe straight to surge past and take the lead.
What followed was a sustained, high-speed battle between the two men. They moved through a 128-car field with the gap between them rarely growing beyond a second.
Verstappen took the lead back near the one-hour mark, reclaiming first place on the straight before diving into the pits at the head of the field.
Juncadella then extended the buffer, Gounon fought off a late challenge from a Rowe BMW, and Verstappen returned for the final stint to pull clear and cross the line first.
The victory did not stand. Stewards disqualified all three drivers after discovering the team had used seven sets of tyres during race day, one more than the permitted six.
The win passed to Dan Harper and Jordan Pepper in the ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3. Winward team boss Christian Hohenadel called it “tough to take” and acknowledged an internal error had left the stewards with no alternative.
The duel that had pros talking
Away from the disqualification, something else was running through the GT3 paddock. How had Verstappen managed to stay so close to Haase through the Nordschleife’s fastest sections, in dirty air, lap after lap?
Following another car through high-speed corners strips a GT3 of downforce. That makes it harder to brake at the same points and corner at the same limits. Most drivers either fall back or make mistakes.
Verstappen did neither.
Haase has raced the Audi R8 LMS GT3 for more than 15 years. He knows how the car behaves in traffic. What he saw from Verstappen still surprised him.
“His precision in the dirty air is something else,” Haase told Motorsport.com. “Whether through the Mutkurve, Pflanzgarten, or Flugplatz, he just stuck to my back. You just don’t see that very often.”
Haase also made a small piece of Nordschleife history that day. He became the first driver to legitimately overtake Verstappen on the circuit in the same class.
The Max Verstappen trick his teammate won’t share
After the race, the Winward team debriefed Verstappen’s approach to managing the aero-wash from Haase’s car.
What emerged from that conversation surprised even Juncadella, a driver who has spent years competing at the top of GT racing and now campaigns hypercars in the World Endurance Championship with Genesis.
“It was impressive to see how well he understood how to stay that close to Christopher [Haase],” Juncadella told Motorsport.com. “It was his first time ever having to race like that in a GT3 car on this track.”
“He actually did something quite special that we talked about after the race. It’s something I would have never thought of myself, and I’ve been driving GT cars for a long time.”
“I’m not going to tell you what it is as I’d rather keep that to myself. It’s a nice trick he found out. Maybe I’ll tell you someday,” he added.
The specifics remain locked away. The significance of Juncadella’s admission, though, is hard to overstate.
This is a man who has spent his career in GT machinery, who understands the aerodynamic challenges of close racing at the highest level, and who says a driver in just his second serious GT3 outing on this circuit arrived at a solution he had never considered.
What makes Verstappen’s adaptation so striking
The Nordschleife does not forgive improvisation. Its 73 corners, blind crests, and high-speed compressions demand years of accumulated memory.
Verstappen was navigating all of that while managing turbulent air from the car directly ahead, in the middle of a live race battle, for the second time in his life on this circuit.
His qualifying lap told its own story. Verstappen’s pole time of 7:51.751 left Haase trailing by 1.974 seconds. On a standard five-kilometre circuit, that translates to roughly half a second, which is a significant margin between two professionals.
Juncadella pointed to something beyond raw pace when explaining how Verstappen pulled it off.
“It’s not so much about his driving style; it’s the sheer confidence that he has to jump into a car you barely know, on a track that demands absolute self-confidence,” he said.
That confidence, Juncadella argues, was present from the very first practice session on Friday.
He also pointed to Verstappen’s sim racing background as a genuine competitive asset. “His experience in sim racing gives him an edge,” Juncadella said.
“Through all those GT races online, he understands exactly how to race against others and how to read situations before they happen.”
For a team-mate watching from the pit wall and the data screens, those hours in the simulator appear to have built something really special.
What comes next
Max Verstappen and the Winward team return to the Nordschleife for the 24h Qualifiers on April 18 and 19, ahead of the Nürburgring 24 Hours in June.
That race will stretch every driver and team over a full day and night. It will be his hardest test in GT3 yet.
The technique Verstappen discovered is almost certainly heading into that race with him. Whether it stays within the team or eventually filters out into the wider GT3 community is an open question.
What is already clear is that in just his second serious outing on one of the world’s most demanding circuits, he found something the professionals had not.
For anyone wondering what kind of racing mind he carries with him into every car he drives, that is probably answer enough.
