The 2026 Nürburgring 24 Hours, one of the most dangerous and gruelling motorsports races in Europe, took place overnight from the 16 to 17 May in Germany. For the first time, four-time Formula One winner Max Verstappen competed in what was the 54th edition of the Nürburgring 24 Hours, also known as the ‘green hell’.

Although Verstappen’s Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo was knocked out of the competition by a technical hitch with just a few hours to go, the race went on, bought to TV screens globally by TV Skyline.

Wolfgang Reeh, CEO at TV Skyline, explains the thrill of this particular race: “The Nürburgring itself is the longest and most dangerous racetrack in the whole world. It’s just about the sport. One complete turn is 25.3 kilometres and there’s the so-called Nordschleife; it’s a very narrow track and more or less every mistake you make ends in an accident.”

The Nordschleife of the Nürburgring is the northern part of the track. In German, the word Nordschleife literally translates to ‘North Loop’. The actual full Nürburgring was last raced on in 1929; then it was split into the Nordschleife and the shorter, safer Südschleife, the latter of which was used more for motorbike racing but was never developed further and is now not in use.

“Beside that, it’s also the race with the most participants,” continues Reeh “This year we had 161 cars starting at the same time. At the end, the winner is the car who arrives first after 24 hours of racing. Each car usually has three or four drivers; they have their stints, as it is called. Usually after one and a half hours, there’s a pit stop and the drivers change over, although sometimes the drivers do a so-called double stint, so they just get new gas and new tyres.”

While the race includes almost 20 different classes from the smaller and slower vehicles up to the elite GT3 class, the winners always come from the GT3 group, of which this year around 40 left the starting line, one of which was Reeh’s son, Julian.

Production for the green hell

TV Skyline has been the host broadcaster for the race since 2017. TV Skyline’s daughter company, Skyline Management, has been the rights holder for the 24 Hour Race for the last two years.

TV Skyline is also the technical service provider for the German rights holder, RTL Nitro, which broadcasts live from the Nürburgring during the race. RTL provides the Nitro channel as a free to air broadcast over the entire 24 hours of the race.

Says Reeh on Nitro: “They have their own commentators and talent in front of the camera and they get the host feed from us, plus some additional cameras. Besides that, we have our own stream, which is another feed; you can watch that on YouTube, for example. There’s a German version and an international version with English commentary, and the footage is also sold to about nearly around 200 countries worldwide.”

TV Skyline’s OB11 was onsite in combination with its gallery truck, the G10. “There are three galleries inside and we have another gallery in OB11 and we have sound and the shaders in there for the host production. And we have another truck for Nitro on site,” notes Reeh.

Because the race takes so long to complete, TV Skyline ran shifts for crew. Rigging began the Sunday beforehand, and broadcasting began on Thursday morning. “It’s long distances and a lot of work,” says Reeh. “During the weekend, because it takes place over this long time, we worked in shifts with different people. Saturday and Sunday we had the A, B and C shift for the camera people, for the engineers, for the replay operators and so on. In the end, the total number of people onsite who are in charge of the whole production was 230.”

Onboard action

Capturing the action from around this 25 kilometre-long track, the pitlanes, on the vehicles themselves, and from the 300,000 visitors on site – up at least 20,000 on 2025 – many of whom stay for a week and turn the site into a festival, is a lot of cameras.

Reeh explains: “We have a camera plan and that gives us a lot of cameras around the track, but not 100% of these 25 kilometres are covered because it’s just too much. So we cover all the important parts with track cameras.

“For the parts where there are no track cameras positioned we have two options. Option number one, we have a helicopter that can show us these parts. Option 2, we have 16 cars equipped with onboard cameras.”

These onboard cameras are of course useful during the daytime, but at night when light levels are low, they really come into their own in keeping the 24 hour broadcast visible, Reeh says.

He comments: “Especially in the night when it’s dark and there’s no light because [the track] goes through the forest and mountains, up and down, it’s completely dark, so the coverage of the onboards is very important. To make this coverage happen because of the large area, it is necessary to have an aeroplane at around 4,000 metre height, and the onboard signals go up from the antenna on the roof of the car to the aeroplane using COFDM RF, and from there it goes down to the OB van.”

The onboards have been developed together with TV Skyline’s partner company, AMP Visual in France. Fans can watch 16 onboards live as individual streams on YouTube during the race.

Reeh adds on the onboards: “The cameras are tiny, special POV cameras and the 16 cars have a camera in front to see where the car is going, and also a camera pointing to the back to see what’s coming behind. It is possible to switch between the different shots.” He adds that some cars have a further one or two cameras, enabling further angles.

However, new this year is a special onboard camera angle installed in just two cars. Reeh explains: “What is new this year is we had two cars equipped with a so-called driver’s eye camera, which is a tiny camera installed inside of the helmet. It’s FIA certified for safety. It shows us a picture of what the driver sees with all the car shaking; it is much more intense than a normal onboard camera. You see that sometimes in Formula One, but it has never been done in a 24 Hour Race and never on the Nürburgring in a GT3 car.”

Each of the drivers in the teams for the two cars using the new driver’s eye camera had a helmet ready to take the device; as each driver changed places throughout the race, they just had to unplug the cable and pop the camera in the new driver’s helmet.

Cablecams and pitlane crews

In addition to the multiple onboard cameras, once again this year TV Skyline installed a 300 metre long cablecam over the pitstop area and the racetrack. “It’s a high speed cablecam so it can follow the cars a bit,” says Reeh.

There were also eight pitlane RF camera crews. These crews show the team pitstops, carry out interviews, and capture the thick of the action within the race. This, added to the onboards and the multiple track cameras, creates a plethora of camera angles and stories for the director that could be overwhelming, were it not for the addition of a replay director who helps filter some of the stories.

Explains Reeh: “We have an EVS recording area with a director only for that pitlane footage. All the signals are recorded so that the director can focus on the race, and whenever there is something interesting, he gets a replay from the replay director.”

He continues on the job of directing the 24 Hour Race that, “it is much more difficult than to do a football game”.

Reeh concludes: “A football game is easy, honestly, because everything happens where the ball is, more or less. In a car race with 160 cars travelling around a track that is 25 kilometres, there’s always happening something in different places at the same time. There’s so much to tell about the whole event.

“At the end of the day, you have to be there onsite once to really understand what’s going on.”