Throughout the Nürburgring 24 Hours weekend, Marek Böckmann will share exclusive behind-the-scenes insights from inside the #26 PROsport Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3.

In this debrief, Böckmann looks back on a weather-affected opening day of qualifying, mixed conditions during both daytime and night running, and the team’s focus on preparation ahead of Friday’s crucial Top Qualifying sessions.

It’s been a very long day, it is already 1:15 in the morning after the end of night qualifying.

Overall, the qualifying sessions were quite solid for us today. Right now, lap times are not the most important thing because tomorrow we’ll take part in the first Top Qualifying session and hopefully qualify through to Top Qualifying 2. That means today was more about using the track time to test a few things, to see where we are compared to the other cars. So far, things are looking quite good.

Condition-wise, today had pretty much everything imaginable. During the first qualifying session in the afternoon, the weather changed completely within about ten minutes. It went from sunshine and a dry track to heavy rain and even hail while everybody was still on slick tyres. At one point it became almost impossible to continue, I just had to manage to simply getting the car back to the pit lane!

The night qualifying session brought very similar conditions, especially once it got really dark. Still, we managed to complete some pretty good runs on a drying track and also do some tyre tests, which are quite important for the 24-hour race.

At the moment, I think we are sorted out, but the real pressure starts tomorrow morning. The main target now is qualifying for Top Qualifying 3. We can still decide in the morning who will drive the session, so that’s the next thing to figure out before getting some sleep ahead of another big day at the Nürburgring.