Important step towards the DTM title for Thomas Preining. The driver won the first race at Hockenheim this Saturday, achieving a 27-point lead in the championship… and could become champion in tomorrow’s qualifying for the race.
After starting from pole position, Preining (Manthey EMA/Porsche) remained at the top and began to build a gap, with his teammate Dennis Olsen as his main pursuer… while keeping Christian Engelhart (GRT Grasser/Lamborghini) behind.
Even after the tire changes, Preining did not face any threat to his lead, delivering a dominant and controlled race without any worthy opponents. Olsen was always with him and, at the end of the 37 laps, finished 0.624s behind for a Manthey EMA 1-2 finish. Engelhart returned to DTM with a comfortable podium finish in third place, nearly ten seconds ahead of Ricardo Feller (Abt Sportsline/Audi).
Mirko Bortolotti (SSR Performance/Lamborghini), second in the championship, finished fifth. He needed a top six finish to stay mathematically in the title fight, given Preining’s victory, and it wasn’t easy to achieve: he was in seventh place for a large part of the race and only managed to overtake Kelvin van der Linde (Abt Sportsline/Audi) and Jack Aitken (Emil Frey Racing/Ferrari) in a later stage of the race to reach fifth place.
Results:
