Best racing weather, great atmosphere and an Audi victory in the Eifel: Christopher Haase, Christian Mamerow, René Rast and Markus Winkelhock were the front runners in their Phoenix Audi R8 LMS ultra at the 42nd ADAC Zurich 24 Hour Race at the Nürburgring. The Ingolstadt-based team thus achieved a very rare feat by winning the world's two most important 24-hour races, Le Mans and the Eifel classic, within the space of a week.

After an enormously varied race with 32 lead changes (record!), the Audi team triumphed with a lead of just 2m 59.737s ahead of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 of last year's winners Black Falcon. In the process, the winning quartet set a new distance record of 4,035.102 kilometers. With Audi, Aston Martin, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, five brands were within the top six places after one of the most exciting 24-hour races ever.

Already in qualifying, Frenchman Kevin Estre in the McLaren MP4-12VC GT3 set a new record with a fabulous time of 8m 10.921s. And the race, too, offered everything a motorsport fan could wish for right from the start: thrilling fights for positions on the most beautiful and most difficult race track in the world.

In many of the 20 classes, the action was at least as exciting as at the overall top. The production cars in particular were engaged in door-to-door duels in the battle for class victories. Hans-Olaf Beckmann's Opel Manta set a special and unique record at its 14th start: The 250-hp cult car now has more than 1,062 (!) 24-hour race laps under its belt. This corresponds to a distance of 27,039 kilometers.

Of course, the events away from the race track were not neglected either. 205,000 spectators celebrated a motorsport folk festival around the 25.378-kilometer track for six days. Whether the traditional Adenauer Racing Day, the drift show, the public viewing of the soccer World Cup matches or the autograph session on the boulevard: this book reviews the entire event and is an absolute must for every motorsport fan.

• 240 pages
• hardback, hardcover
• about 1000 colour photos
• German and English text
• Detailed statistics on the 24-hour race
• Format 235 x 315 mm