The Latest Breaking News from Ricardo Feller

Bortolotti became the first repeat winner of 2023 when he beat Abt Audi's Ricardo Feller in a race-long battle at the 4.3km circuit, taking the championship lead in the process.

Although Bortolotti held the lead from pole position at the start, he was unable to pull away from the chasing pack as he did at the Nurburgring a fortnight ago, with 20kg of success ballast on his Lamborghini keeping Feller in the hunt.

SSR Performance’s Bortolotti was unchallenged in the hour-long opening contest at the former German Grand Prix venue, resisting two safety cars periods and a brief rain shower to take the chequered flag by 1.1s over Winward Mercedes’ Lucas Auer. Championship leader Thomas Preining completed the podium in third.

On the track where Rossi had achieved race-winning success in MotoGP on three occasions, 'The Doctor' achieved a breakthrough in his new career.

Due to the short nature of the Nuremberg street circuit, the 27-driver grid was split into two groups for qualifying, with each group getting 20 minutes of on-track time. 

With Audi having been handed a 20kg weight reduction overnight, Feller was able to take pole position in a red-flagged qualifying and then lead every lap en route to a second career win at the Dutch venue.

Preining had looked set for a third career victory in the DTM having led the race comfortably from pole position until the final 10 minutes, when his Manthey EMA team was found to have not correctly completed the pitstop procedure.

Manthey EMA driver Preining topped the 20-minute session with a time of 1m21.347s, beating the similar Porsche 911 GT3 R of Toksport WRT driver Tim Heinemann by 0.055 seconds to pole in a somewhat anticlimactic end to qualifying.

Apart from a brief period shortly after his pitstop, SSR Performance driver Perera was never threatened at the front of the field as he started his first full season in the DTM with a fine four-second victory.