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DTM Lausitzring: Preining outsmarts Audi duo to take Sunday win

Manthey EMA’s Preining fell behind both van de Linde and Feller at one stage, but quickly repassed the Abt Audi duo to claim his first win of the 2024 season and move up to second in the standings.

At the start of the race, the reigning champion pulled away cleanly from pole position to hold the lead over Feller, but couldn’t shake off the Swiss driver and his team-mate van der Linde, who had got the jump on the SSR Performance Lamborghini of Mirko Bortolotti.

At the start of lap 4, Feller positioned his Audi around the outside of Preining’s Porsche into Turn 1, which gave him the inside line into the following right-hander. Despite running slightly over the grass, Feller was able to barge his way past the Austrian, snatching the lead for the first time in the race.

A brief safety car period for Clemens Schmid’s Dorr McLaren threatened to upset the status quo, but it wasn’t until the pit window opened after 20 minutes of racing that the order at the front changed again.

Preining was the first of the leaders to dive into the pits, with Feller and van der Linde coming in on successive laps.

Feller did manage to retain the lead initially out of the pits, but Preining’s tyres were already up to temperature and he found his way past the Audi on lap 18 to grab the top spot again.

However, the time they spent battling on track left them vulnerable to an overcut from van der Linde, who duly leapfrogged both of them by completing his mandatory pitstop a lap later.

This put Preining in the worst possible position, sandwiched by the two Abt drivers and with the risk of losing second place as well. But the 25-year-old managed to outfox his rivals, streaming past van der Linde with a bold move at the hairpin to make the decisive pass for victory.

Feller also cleared van der Linde a few corners later, although the stewards later asked him to hand back the position for an illegal overtake.

Before Feller and van der Linde could trade spots, the safety car was deployed yet again, this time for a collision between Maximilian Paul and Luca Stolz that left both their cars beached in the gravel at Turn 6.

It was only when the race resumed with 13 minutes left on the clock that Feller could give way to his team-mate, by which time Preining had already mastered the restart to cement his position at the front.

Van der Linde, despite having 20kg of success ballast after his victory on Saturday, kept the pressure up on Preining till the end, but the factory Porsche driver was relatively untroubled as he took the chequered flag with a winning margin of 1.4s.

Feller ended up a further 1.5s back, while Bortolotti ended up fourth in the sole-surviving SSR Lamborghini after team-mate Nicki Thiim was forced to retire early with a brake issue.

Three-time DTM champion Rene Rast managed to drag his Schubert BMW to as high as fifth after starting 13th on the grid, but an ill-fated passing attempt on Bortolotti at the final turn allowed the GRT Lamborghini of Luca Englster to take advantage of the situation and complete the top five.

Rast still managed to finish as the top BMW in sixth ahead of the Winward Mercedes of Maro Engel, who put in an even more impressive recovery drive after being shuffled to the back of the grid for a technical infringement in qualifying.

Schubert BMW’s Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann were eighth and ninth respectively, while Lucas Auer completed the top 10 in the second of the two Winward Mercedes cars.

Only 16 cars finished the race, meaning everyone except 16th-placed Ben Dorr (Dorr McLaren) scored points.

DTM Lausitzring Race Results

Cla   Nº   Driver   Car / Engine   Laps   Time   Gap 
1 91  Thomas Preining Porsche 42 1:01'51.739  
2 3  K.van der Linde Audi 42 1:01'53.180 1.441
3 7  Ricardo Feller Audi 42 1:01'54.822 3.083
4 92  Mirko Bortolotti Lamborghini 42 1:01'55.460 3.721
5 19  Luca Engstler Lamborghini 42 1:01'59.240 7.501
6 33  René Rast BMW 42 1:02'00.343 8.604
7 130  Maro Engel Mercedes 42 1:02'02.378 10.639
8 31  S.van der Linde BMW 42 1:02'03.243 11.504
9 11  Marco Wittmann BMW 42 1:02'05.235 13.496
10 22  Lucas Auer Mercedes 42 1:02'05.882 14.143
11 90  Ayhancan Guven Porsche 42 1:02'07.525 15.786
12 36  Arjun Maini Mercedes 42 1:02'07.877 16.138
13 69  T.Vermeulen Ferrari 42 1:02'08.407 16.668
14 14  Jack Aitken Ferrari 42 1:02'08.820 17.081
15 63  C.Engelhart Lamborghini 42 1:02'09.461 17.722
16 25  Ben Dörr McLaren 42 1:02'13.945 22.206
  71  Maximilian Paul Lamborghini 18 26'53.650 Retirement
  4  Luca Stolz Mercedes 18 27'27.136 Retirement
  85  Clemens Schmid McLaren 3 4'27.173 Retirement
  94  Nicki Thiim Lamborghini 3 4'43.913 Retirement
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