Jeff Westphal did the unthinkable when he won pole position at this year’s Nürburgring 24 Hours. He became the first American in the race’s 45-year history to win pole position and he did it with an American-owned team, in a car dreamt up by an American. All while competing against teams supported by major…

If you swap on new tires right at the end of a race, you should be required to burn off all the tread before you put the car away. Like this!

The N24 started with 180 cars on the grid this year, but finished with much less as the night took its toll like always on this very tight circuit. Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus had a bad start as well with the brand new SCG 003C, but kept on rocking to make history by crossing the line at #35.

Phoenix Racing won last year’s Nürburgring 24 by setting a new distance record after completing 159 laps. The car you see here is wearing their #1 sticker.

It was in third position when it entered the pits, but then it decided to fire up properly and get a bit further from a podium finish.

[The first pit stop went well and while the SCG 003C entered the field again at the 24th position, their fastest lap is just 0.8 seconds off the fastest yet despite the traffic. 22 hours and 54 minutes to go! Photo credit: Máté Petrány/Jalopnik]

To be honest, I haven’t seen much of the 24h Classic race itself as I was wandering around in the forest to make it to the Karussel corner—which is far, far away from civilization. Yet here are a zillion pictures anyway.

The Nürburgring 24 Hours starts at 4 pm today (10 am EDT), and here’s how you can tune in to see more of the action than we could possibly do at the track. Remember, no sleep ‘till Sunday afternoon!

I hate doing laundry so much that I usually drop it off somewhere and make a wash-and-fold joint do it. All that waiting and sitting at home. Grooooan. One spectator at the Nürburgring figured out how to make laundry tolerable, though: she set up right outside one of the turns at the 24 Hours race.

Yes, unfortunately Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus lost one car for this weekend when Maccinadue hit a wall at 200 km/h at the Kesselchen during practice yesterday. The good news is that everybody is fine as Jim’s safety measures worked perfectly.

Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus didn’t leave anything to the last minute with the SCG 003C, and the team was pretty much ready to hit the Ring on Tuesday already. Yet that doesn’t mean they didn’t strip both cars bare naked numerous times for some final adjustments before the first practice laps, and I was there with my…

That’s a Motörhead 1 Series at the Nürburgring, and no, there will be no more mention of Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus in this post, because I’ll have plenty about Jim and Co. later.

[Of course there’s somebody racing an old Viper at the ‘Ring! Team Titus Dittmann entered the N24 last year too, and it’s sehr gut to see those side pipes back. Photo credit: Máté Petrány/Jalopnik.]

I drove all night to make sure I got to the Ring in time for the Jalopnik bump(s) to be added to the SCG 003’s livery before it was shown to the public in the nearby village of Adenau. That’s at least ten extra horsepower right there, success is inevitable.

And yes, for a 700 mile drive that takes eleven hours on the Autobahn, I’ll take the BMW. It’s a brown diesel wagon, no manual I’m afraid, but we can’t have everything.

If either of the two SCG 003s can do just one yard at the Nürburgring on Saturday, Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus will make history and American flags can be raised just a little higher all around the globe. But team James Glickenhaus and their gorgeous race cars will do more than just a yard. Much more.

Last year, TFritch worked as a crew chief on Rotek Racing’s Audi TT-RS. If you’ve ever wondered what the Nürburgring 24 Hours is like, take a look. Between the 24 Hours itself and the Classic race that runs with it, I’m not sure I’d ever want to leave.

The Rotek Racing team of Robb Holland, Tom Chilton and David Thilenius were propelled forward at a high rate of speed by a certain wing endplate sticker to a first place class finish in the Nürburgring 24 Hours Qualifying Race.

Per DailySportsCar, temporary measures have been put in place by the Deutsche Motor Sport Bund to allow the banned race classes to resume racing at the Nürburgring. The bans have now been lifted, but now we have a 5% reduction in power, limits on fan access, and most peculiarly, speed limits on some sections.