NLS Nürburgring. 2026 season

Origin

The Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie began as a pooling of resources: in 1977 a group of motorsport clubs — members of the ADAC and the DMV, each of which had been running its own touring car race of between three and a half and six hours at the Nürburgring — formed the Veranstaltergemeinschaft Langstreckenpokal Nürburgring, the VLN, to run their events as one championship.¹ The first round, the Internationales Ahr-Eifel-Rennen of 23 April 1977, drew roughly 150 entries for five hours of racing; six rounds made up the inaugural season, and Ernst Thierfelder took the first title in a Simca Rallye.¹² The timing mattered — Formula One had abandoned the Nordschleife the previous summer after Niki Lauda's crash, and the club championship founded a year later became the institution that has kept the 'Ring's long circuit in continuous racing use ever since.³

Turning points

The Veedol-Cup decades

For most of its history the championship was known by its sponsors rather than its statutes: the Valvoline and later Veedol trophies gave it the informal Veedol-Cup name through the 1980s and 1990s, BFGoodrich held the title sponsorship from 2001 to 2009, and the organisers' own initials — VLN — served as the public name from 2009.¹ The format has barely moved in fifty years: races of four to six hours on the roughly 24-kilometre combination of Grand Prix circuit and Nordschleife, grids well in excess of a hundred cars from near-standard production machinery to GT racers, and a championship scored on class results rather than outright position — so the title regularly goes to amateurs in small cars rather than to professionals in the fastest ones.¹⁴

The manufacturers' test bench

The Nordschleife's status as the industry's proving ground pulled the works in: from the 2000s manufacturers used the series to develop and race endurance versions of their GT cars, and the arrival of GT3 machinery in the top SP9 class put factory-supported teams — Manthey's Porsches, Falken's, BMW and Mercedes-AMG customer squads — at the front of fields still dominated numerically by privateers.¹ Because those crews compete past each other and the class-based championship, the series introduced the Speed Trophy in 2013, a separate classification for the teams fighting for overall wins.⁵ The series is also the gateway to the Nürburgring 24 Hours — the route by which drivers earn the Nordschleife permit — and the two ADAC 24h Qualifiers race within the calendar.¹⁶

The NLS rebrand

In December 2019 the championship took its current name, Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, from the 2020 season — the VLN organisation behind it unchanged — and now runs under ADAC RAVENOL title partnership.⁷ The recent seasons consolidated the platform: the 24h Qualifiers were reintegrated into the series, and the first seven races of 2025 generated more than 42 million video views — a global audience for what remains, structurally, a German club championship.⁶

Today's shape

The 2025 title went to Nick Wüstenhagen and Ranko Mijatovic in FK Performance Motorsport's BMW M4 GT4 — nine consecutive class wins before second place in the finale sealed it, the first championship in the Bremen team's thirteen NLS seasons, and the end of Adrenalin Motorsport's record run of seven straight titles.⁴ Mijatovic, champion in 2024 in a BMW M240i, became the first driver since Johannes Scheid in 1980–81 to defend the title after changing cars.⁴ The Speed Trophy and the final overall win of 2025 went to Falken Motorsports, whose Porsche 911 GT3 Rs finished one–two at the last round, Dorian Boccolacci ahead of Nico Menzel.⁴ The 2026 season is the series' fiftieth: ten races across eight event dates from 14 March to 10 October, including the ADAC 24h Nürburgring Qualifiers in April and a September double-header.⁶

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia, "Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrburgring_Langstrecken-Serie. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. ADAC RAVENOL Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, "All VLN champions at a glance," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.nuerburgring-langstrecken-serie.de/en/all-vln-champions-at-a-glance/. ↩

3. 8W (Forix), "Defining moments in Grand Prix history" (entry on Niki Lauda at the Nürburgring 1976), accessed 11 June 2026, https://forix.com/8w/defining-moments.html. ↩

4. ADAC RAVENOL Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, "Wüstenhagen and Mijatovic are champions 2025," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.nuerburgring-langstrecken-serie.de/en/2025/10/11/wustenhagen-and-mijatovic-are-champions-2025/; Nürburgring, "NLS 10: Wüstenhagen and Mijatovic are champions in 2025," accessed 11 June 2026, https://nuerburgring.de/news/nls-10-wuestenhagen-und-mijatovic-sind-meister-2025?locale=en. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Motorsport-Total, "NLS-Speed-Trophäe im Fokus: Preisgeld, Punkteverteilung und bisherige Meister," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.motorsport-total.com/nuerburgring-langstrecken-serie/news/nls-speed-trophaee-im-fokus-preisgeld-punkteverteilung-und-bisherige-meister-24121102. ↩

6. ADAC RAVENOL Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, "Ten races in the 50th season of the NLS," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.nuerburgring-langstrecken-serie.de/language/en/2025/09/08/ten-races-in-the-50th-season-of-the-nls/. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. ADAC Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, "New title: Nürburgring Endurance Series to kick off in 2020," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.nuerburgring-langstrecken-serie.de/en/2019/12/03/new-title-nurburgring-endurance-series-to-kick-off-in-2020/. ↩