Preining Becomes DTM Champion 2026: The Title Without a Race Win at Hockenheim

Klaus Weber · DTM Correspondent

Thomas Preining didn't win a single race across the entire season finale and still became champion because he never finished worse than fifth in either race.

Thomas Preining secured the DTM Championship title on Sunday at the season finale on the Hockenheimring with third place in the second race, his second title after 2023. The weekend itself was anything but straightforward: two practice sessions with changing conditions, a wet qualifying with a surprise pole-sitter, a first race interrupted by a red flag, and a second qualifying decided by just 0.006 seconds on pole position. Looking at all six sessions together reveals why, in the end, consistency rather than individual speed determined the champion.

Preining Without a Race Win, but Also Without a Collapse

Preining set the fastest time in both Friday practice sessions, 1:36.974 minutes at midday and 1:47.823 minutes in wet conditions that afternoon. In the first qualifying, despite a deleted lap for track limits, he could only manage third place, and in the race, he slipped back to 13th after running off the grass at the Parabolika before finishing fifth, 17.057 seconds behind winner Lucas Auer. On Sunday, he qualified seventh, solid but not spectacular, and moved up to third on the opening lap. After Engel's overtake on Buus, he sat second behind the Mercedes driver and let teammate Ricardo Feller through on the final lap; third place was enough for the title.

Across six sessions, that revealed a pattern: no wins, but no result worse than seventh place. That consistency was precisely what set him apart from his two title rivals. Maro Engel won the decisive second race and ran consistently with fourth in the first race, but finished 12 points behind Preining, in part because a stuck right rear wheel during his pit stop in the first race cost him the lead. He'd inherited that lead from brand stablemate Lucas Auer after the restart, but had to surrender the third place he'd fought back for after a hard move against Wittmann on race control's orders. Marco Wittmann, meanwhile, showed decent race results with third in the first and seventh in the second, but had to fight through the field both times: 11th in Saturday qualifying, 16th on Sunday.

Engstler's Pole Weekend Ends in Lap Two

The steepest rise through Saturday morning came not from one of the title contenders but from Luca Engstler. In the first session, the Abt driver could only manage eighth, 0.431 seconds behind Preining. In the second session he improved to third before claiming his first-ever DTM pole position in wet qualifying with 1:47.048 minutes, 0.407 seconds clear of Auer. The race itself ended for him in lap two: Fighting for the lead, Engstler and Auer made contact in the fast right-hander before the Mercedes grandstand, the Lamborghini hit the wall. According to an Abt statement, the chassis, gearbox, and engine were damaged so severely that the car couldn't be used on Sunday, which is why Abt Sportsline started the second race with only Marco Mapelli.

Beyond Engstler's retirement, it was the midfield that shaped the story on the first day. Jules Gounon, who'd qualified only 20th, drove up to seventh, a 13-position gain. On the flip side, Ricardo Feller lost his Porsche's front bumper after a collision with Thierry Vermeulen and was handed three penalty-laps, ending up 15th, ten spots worse than his fifth-place start. After the race, Bastian Buus faced another blow: the technical inspection found insufficient fuel remaining in his Porsche tank for the mandatory fuel sample, prompting race control to disqualify him to the back of the grid at 21st.

0.006 Seconds and Wittmann's Sunday Charge

The second qualifying delivered the weekend's tightest pole battle at just 0.006 seconds between Buus and Feller, with five drivers within two tenths. After Saturday's disqualification, it was a direct answer for Buus; he went into the race as fastest and led until lap ten before Engel moved ahead after light contact. For the Land driver, that meant fourth place, just 0.296 seconds behind Preining.

The most striking move in Sunday's field came from Marco Wittmann. Starting 16th, the Schubert driver fought his way to seventh, a nine-position gain. More wasn't possible: Wittmann had already criticized his BMW's BoP classification after qualifying, and after the race said they simply didn't have the chance to change anything. Mirko Bortolotti (17th to 10th) and Finn Wiebelhaus (18th to 11th) showed similarly strong improvement. Wittmann's Schubert teammate Kelvin van der Linde, though, came home 18th from 14th on the grid, finishing 35.327 seconds behind Wittmann, the largest gap between Schubert teammates across the weekend. Jules Gounon, who'd driven from 20th to seventh on Saturday, retired this time at the end of lap one after a collision with Thierry Vermeulen. Only Bastian Buus matched that swing, disqualified on Saturday then running fourth from pole on Sunday.

Manthey EMA Dominant in Team Standings

In the drivers' standings, Preining finishes the season with 225 points ahead of Engel's 213 and Wittmann's 198, with Lucas Auer fourth courtesy of his Saturday win. In the team championship, Manthey EMA took the title with 330 points ahead of Winward Racing (309) and Schubert Motorsport (284), their third team title in four years after 2023 and 2025. That both Manthey drivers Preining and Feller stood on the podium in the second race underscores just how consistently the team performed across the entire finale weekend.

For the coming season, this weekend's key observation remains: the gap between qualifying and race pace at several teams proved significantly larger than the gaps between the cars themselves. Wittmann's rise from 16th to seventh and Gounon's swing from seventh to a lap-one retirement show how much tire degradation, pit stop windows, and individual incidents can still shift results, even when the balance of performance keeps the field arithmetically tight.