BMW M3 Touring P5, SPX class win

BMW M Motorsport used the 2026 Nürburgring 24 Hours to turn an April Fools’ concept into a race result. The company said on May 17 that its one-off M3 Touring 24H finished fifth overall and won the SPX class at the Nordschleife in Nürburg, Germany. BMW also said its #99 M4 GT3 EVO from ROWE Racing finished fourth overall after an early spin. Official Nürburgring organizers said Mercedes-AMG won the race overall with the #80 Winward Racing car driven by Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller and Maxime Martin. ### How unusual is a BMW M3 Touring in a 24-hour race? The BMW M3 Touring 24H was not a standard production wagon with minor changes. BMW M said the car was built in eight months from the M3 Touring road car and used many racing components from the BMW M4 GT3 EVO, with the stated aim of creating a vehicle capable of competing at GT3 level. (press.bmwgroup.com) The Nürburgring organizers had already highlighted the car before the race weekend as a fan attraction. In a May 16 event preview, the official 24h Nürburgring site said the M3 Touring 24H had dominated the SPX class in the mid-April qualifiers and had shown it could run at a pace comparable with GT3 entries. (press.bmwgroup.com) ### Who drove the M3 Touring 24H to fifth place? Schubert Motorsport fielded the M3 Touring 24H with Jens Klingmann, Connor De Phillippi, Ugo de Wilde and Neil Verhagen, according to BMW’s race recap. BMW said the four drivers ran a clean race, stayed with the leading group and at times had an overall podium in sight before finishing fifth. (24h-rennen.de) Fifth overall mattered because the car was entered in SPX, a class used for special and experimental entries rather than the top GT3-based category that usually fights for the overall win. BMW’s result therefore stood out beyond the class victory itself: the company’s one-off wagon finished ahead of much of the field in a race that organizers said drew 352,000 spectators. (press.bmwgroup.com) ### What happened to BMW’s main GT3 contender? The #99 BMW M4 GT3 EVO from ROWE Racing finished fourth overall, BMW said, after recovering from what it described as an unavoidable spin shortly after the start. BMW listed the driver lineup as Dan Harper, Max Hesse, Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor. (press.bmwgroup.com) Fourth place left BMW just off the overall podium. BMW added that the result also counted as second place in the Intercontinental GT Challenge classification that includes the Nürburgring 24 Hours. (press.bmwgroup.com) ### Did BMW have other cars in the fight? BMW said the defending champions in the #1 car retired late on Saturday evening because of a technical defect. The company also said the #77 BMW M4 GT3 EVO from Schubert Motorsport finished in the top 10. (press.bmwgroup.com) The broader race was decided in Mercedes-AMG’s favor. Official Nürburgring organizers said the #80 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG took victory after the sister #3 Mercedes-AMG, which had looked set to win, retired with a driveshaft failure with a little under three and a half hours remaining. ### Why did BMW emphasize the crowd and the backstory? (press.bmwgroup.com) BMW framed the result as the payoff from a fan-led idea. The company said the M3 Touring 24H originated from an April Fools’ joke in 2025 and was then turned into a real race car after what it called an extremely positive response from fans. (24h-rennen.de) The crowd figure gave that story more weight. BMW said a record 352,000 spectators attended the event at the Nürburgring, where the M3 Touring 24H was one of the weekend’s most visible curiosities before becoming one of its leading finishers. (press.bmwgroup.com) BMW said the M3 Touring 24H will appear at selected events in the future. The official Nürburgring results page has posted the 2026 provisional race result and class result documents from the May 16-17 event. (press.bmwgroup.com)