Klaus Weber · DTM Correspondent
In the second race of the season finale, Maro Engel prevailed against the Manthey duo of Feller and Preining, while the championship was decided in the background.
Maro Engel won Sunday's second and final DTM race of the season finale at Hockenheimring in his Winward Mercedes-AMG, ahead of the two Manthey Porsches of Ricardo Feller and Thomas Preining. After 57:21.106 minutes of racing, Feller was 3.058 seconds down, with Preining a further 0.640 seconds behind in third place, keeping the lead battle incredibly tight all the way to the checkered flag.
Tight battle at the front until the finish
Bastian Buus, who started from pole position after setting the fastest time in qualifying 2 (1:36.923 minutes), lost the lead in lap 10 when Engel passed him after light contact and crossed the line fourth, just 0.296 seconds behind Preining and 3.994 seconds back from Engel. Preining attempted an early pit stop in lap 13, spending 7.9 seconds in the pits, but Engel came back out a lap later after 6.7 seconds and stayed in front. Light rain that fell during the pit window also didn't change the outcome, with no one switching to wet tires.
Ben Dörr drove for Dörr Motorsport to fifth place, 10.139 seconds back, well clear of teammate Timo Glock, who only managed 16th from ninth on the grid. Matteo Cairoli brought Emil Frey Racing a solid points haul with sixth place, while teammate Thierry Vermeulen, after his contact with Jules Gounon, could only manage 12th, 16.937 seconds behind Cairoli.
Preining clinches championship despite third place
Thomas Preining's third place behind Feller and Engel was enough to secure the championship title. According to Speedweek, it's the Manthey driver's second DTM drivers' title after 2023, having entered the finale as the championship leader. Preining finishes the season with 225 points, twelve more than runner-up Maro Engel, with Marco Wittmann taking third. In the final lap, Preining let his teammate Ricardo Feller through to second without resistance.
For Preining, it was a controlled punctuation mark on a season that had involved him in a first-lap contact the day before in the opening race. On Sunday, a third place proved sufficient to hold together the points needed for the title.
Collision at turn two ends Gounon's race early
Jules Gounon retired already at the end of the first lap. Braking into the second corner, Thierry Vermeulen hit the rear of Gounon's Winward Mercedes, which then made contact with Matteo Cairoli. Gounon parked his car in the pits. Vermeulen received a penalty lap for the collision but remained in the race, finishing 12th.
Arjun Maini set the fastest lap of the race in eighth place (1:37.842 minutes). For HRT Ford Performance, with Finn Wiebelhaus also scoring in 11th, it was a respectable weekend.
Midfield shows significant shifts
At Schubert Motorsport, there was a major performance gap within the team: Marco Wittmann finished seventh, while Kelvin van der Linde with 18th place and a gap of 35.327 seconds to his teammate fell significantly short. At GRT Grasser Racing Team, Mirko Bortolotti, who had finished second in the opening race, had to settle for tenth on Sunday, 17.083 seconds clear of teammate Maximilian Paul.
With the season finale, a weekend comes to an end that once again underscored DTM 2026's competitive depth: tight qualifying times, position changes right through to the final lap, and a title won not through one dominant performance but through consistency across an entire season.
