Champion Thomas Preining proves Porsche’s strength with Sunday’s pole at the Lausitzring and prevails over Feller: BMW and AMG not in the front field
After second on the grid and third place on Saturday, Manthey EMA driver Thomas Preining goes one better in Sunday qualifying at the Lausitzring in dry conditions and takes his fourth DTM pole: The Porsche works driver wins in 1:20.858 minutes against Abt Audi driver Ricardo Feller, who was 0.044 seconds off the pace
“That was hard on the limit, I almost hit it twice in one lap”, and thanked his team: “I’m really happy, we’ve done a lot of driver coaching here so that you can go to the limit with a clear conscience.” That has “paid off”.
Second-placed Feller was also satisfied with his performance, even though he had been aiming for pole: “The car has improved compared to yesterday, the guys did a great job.” The weather is now the big question mark, as it was on Saturday, because depending on the weather forecast, a wet or dry race is on the program in the afternoon
Bortolotti manages one of his “best laps ever “
In third place was SSR Lamborghini driver Mirko Bortolotti, who was 0.220 seconds behind – and spoke of one of his “best laps ever”. “I couldn’t believe it”, “Before the weekend I thought that the car would be good for the top 10 with the current set-up, so this is an unbelievably great result and a mega lap!”
Fourth place went to Kelvin van der Linde, the second Abt-Audi driver. The Saturday winner was 0.238 seconds behind Preining’s pole time. Ayhancan Güven rounded off the strong Manthey EMA result in fifth place
Disappointments for BMW and Mercedes-AMG
While Grasser-Lamborghini driver Luca Engstler, who traveled to the Lausitzring as DTM leader, achieved a strong result with sixth place, there were disappointing results for the BMW and Mercedes-AMG drivers.
Schubert driver Marco Wittmann (+0.515) was the best driver in the M4 GT3 in ninth place, while Luca Stolz, the strongest Mercedes-AMG driver, was unable to finish higher than tenth. He was 0.562 seconds off the pace.
Things got even worse for two of their brand colleagues: Schubert-BMW driver Sheldon van der Linde only finished 18th, while Winward-Mercedes driver Maro Engel, who leads the DTM standings, had to make do with 19th place after finishing second on Saturday.
Dramatic radio messages from McLaren driver Schmid
Qualifying didn’t go perfectly for McLaren Team Dörr either, as Clemens Schmid retired after just a few corners because his fuel pump went on strike. He managed to get the car going again, but just a few meters later the vehicle broke down again.
“No fuel pressure again, damn it!” the GT3 veteran’s emotions ran high on the radio. The Austrian managed to bring the car into the pits after eight minutes – and still ended up in 17th place.
After the unusual start times on Saturday due to the Ice Hockey World Championship on ProSieben, the DTM is back to its usual times today: The race will start at 13:30 – only the weather remains the big unknown.
