Klaus Weber · DTM-Korrespondent
Matteo Cairoli and Marco Wittmann split the victories at the Nurburgring, but the real turning point for the championship comes Sunday in turn one.
Two races, two winners, and between them a start that changed the landscape for the rest of the season. Matteo Cairoli drove from pole to a flag-to-flag victory on Saturday with nearly ten seconds of breathing room, a margin that rarely appears in the tight DTM field. On Sunday, Marco Wittmann took over after two of the championship's currently fastest drivers, Maro Engel and Lucas Auer, eliminated each other in turn one and took Kelvin van der Linde along with them. But looking only at the podium misses the weekend's real story: in the midfield, the order between qualifying and the race shifted by more than ten positions in places.
Tight Field From Practice Through Qualifying
In the first free practice session, Cairoli set the pace with a 1:26.144 minute lap, just ahead of Lucas Auer and Marco Mapelli. In the second session, the best time dropped by roughly six tenths: Thomas Preining took over with a 1:25.517 minute effort. Notable: Schubert Motorsport, with Kelvin van der Linde and Wittmann, consistently cracked the top five in both sessions, a sign that the race trim of the BMW M4 GT3 EVO was running stably across the day.
In the first qualifying, the tight level confirmed itself: Cairoli's pole time of 1:25.345 minutes was just 36 thousandths ahead of Preining and 78 thousandths up on Auer. The first four positions were separated by just 105 thousandths, a field strength that's unusual even for the BoP-regulated DTM in this density. At the other end of the timing sheets, things already went sideways for HRT Ford Performance before the start: Finn Wiebelhaus was 12.1 seconds off the pace, Arjun Maini by 42.6 seconds. Both started from the back of the field in a race that was already decided before turn one.
Cairoli Dominates, the Midfield Pays the Price
Cairoli made no mistakes in the race and controlled from pole to the checkered flag. The 9.973-second margin over Preining shows this wasn't a safety car or a tire problem for the chaser that artificially inflated the lead, but simply superior race trim pace. Wittmann brought his fourth starting position home third, with Ben Dörr making his way from fifth on the grid up to fourth, ahead of Auer and Maro Engel.
The race's real story unfolded further back, though. Eight minutes into the race, contact came at the NGK chicane between Tom Kalender and Nicki Thiim. Race control saw Thiim at fault and handed him a penalty lap, but for Kalender the weekend was finished regardless: his Mercedes had to limp back to the pits damaged and retired. A third of the field didn't make it to the finish. Beyond Kalender, Kelvin van der Linde succumbed to a technical failure, as did Timo Glock, Marco Mapelli, Finn Wiebelhaus, Arjun Maini, and Mirko Bortolotti, several of them showing solid pace in Friday's practice sessions.
Turn One Chaos Reshuffles the Weekend
In the second qualifying, Jules Gounon posted a best time of 1:25.062 minutes, ahead of Ben Dörr and Cairoli, with the first nine drivers spread across just 0.24 seconds, another sign of the extreme competitiveness in this field in qualifying trim. In the race itself, though, the weekend decided itself not on the timing sheets but right at turn one: Engel and Auer collided, Auer was spun into van der Linde, all three cars suffered total damage and retired before lap one was complete. For the championship, that matters because it means two of the season's most consistent point scorers were suddenly left with nothing.
No one benefited more clearly from that crash than Tom Kalender. Because he'd exited early in race one, he still had a fresh set of tires for race two, an advantage he put to decisive use from eleventh on the grid. He finished second on the podium, just 0.517 seconds behind winner Wittmann and 0.401 seconds ahead of Preining, who completed the top three. For the young driver, it was his first DTM podium finish in his career, coming remarkably after a weekend that started Saturday with a collision. Further down the field, there was significant movement. Bortolotti climbed from sixteenth to fifth, Maini from tenth to fourth, Glock from nineteenth to eighth, all three running noticeably better pace on Sunday after Saturday retirements. Conversely, Cairoli dropped from his Saturday victory and third on the grid down to thirteenth, Gounon from pole to fourteenth, Dörr sidelined entirely after a strong showing Saturday. For the championship, the weekend means one thing above all: Wittmann and Schubert Motorsport have cut into the lead of the previous frontrunners with a win and a podium, while the two Mercedes drivers at the top of the table, Engel and Auer, left pointless. Whether this new order holds will only become clear next weekend, when ballast and tire allocation get shuffled once more.
