Indian driver finishes third in Germany endurance classic

Akshay Gupta claimed third place in the SP3T class at the 2025 ADAC Nürburgring 24 Hours, battling gearbox issues with his AsBest Racing teammates in a thrilling endurance race

Hyderabad: Indian endurance specialist and tech entrepreneur Akshay Gupta continued his run of international success with a third-place finish in the competitive SP3T class at the 2025 ADAC Ravenol 24 Hours of Nürburgring in Germany.

Sharing the #808 Cupra Leon TCR DSG with Japan’s Junichi Umemoto and German duo Lutz Obermann and Dennis Leissing, the AsBest Racing quartet outperformed expectations to climb the podium despite early gearbox gremlins and an overnight repair stop that cost nearly two hours.

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Qualifying on Friday afternoon was a nail-biter, with just two seconds covering the five quickest SP3T runners. The AsBest Racing Cupra slotted into fifth, its crew quietly confident that race savvy would outweigh outright pace.

When 130 cars rolled away for the warm-up lap on Saturday, a violent jolt in third gear sent panic through the cockpit. The DSG gearbox stuck momentarily, and by the time the lights went green, the #808 had tumbled to seventh. Any thoughts of damage limitation lasted exactly one lap. Lutz Obermann, fuelled by home-crowd energy, carved through the pack with 15 breathtaking passes in seven laps, hauling the Cupra into third before handing to Leissing.

Later on, Gupta’s stint was equally dramatic. He hustled the car up to second place, only for the lurking gearbox gremlin to trigger an unscheduled stop that dropped the team to fourth. As darkness fell, endurance racing’s natural law of attrition took over: the Dacia Logan spun into the barriers, the crowd-favourite Beetle RSR coasted to retirement, and Sharky Racing’s Golf expired — elevating the privateer squad to a comfortable third while shadowing the factory BMW and Hyundai programs.