Indian racecar driver Akshay Gupta grabbed first place in the seventh round of the prestigious Nurburgring Langstrecken-Serie, winning the VT2-F category and finishing 46th overall out of 121 cars. The 31-year-old Indian racecar driver, along with his German co-driver Alex Schneider, claimed their first victory of the season.

Gupta faced a string of setbacks in the first half of the season, including mechanical issues, crashes, and a rib fracture in the fifth round. Gupta's resilience paid off with a second-place finish in the sixth round, a six-hour endurance race in August 2024, and now topping it off with a victory, as per the press release by Team Mertens Motorsport.

Gupta and Schneider mastered the wet conditions of an already challenging Nurburgring circuit and qualified in second place. At the opening lap of the four-hour endurance race, Schneider took the lead in the race and maintained it for the first two hours, tackling the challenge of a quickly drying circuit, before handing over the car to Gupta. The Indian also did a two-hour double stint and consistently kept increasing the gap to second place, bringing the car home with a comfortable lead of one minute and 41 seconds.

Speaking on this achievement, Gupta said that it has been a long time coming for the team. "Alex has been an incredible teammate to share the car with. We have been working on the car since Thursday morning to ensure everything was spot on with the setup. The wet conditions played to our advantage since we were the fastest, even beating cars in the much faster category than us. Managing tyre strategy and maintaining control on the partly wet and partly dry circuit was tricky, but it was so much more rewarding. We pushed hard and made it count in the end," he told ANI.

With the eighth and final round of the championship scheduled for November 16, Gupta is now aiming to clinch the Vice Champion title for 2024.

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