Ricardo Feller has won the second DTM race of the weekend at Zandvoort, after starting on pole, for Abt Sportsline Audi.
He lead away at the start and apart from briefly relinquishing the lead at the pit stops, the Swiss driver comfortably won from Thomas Preining, 2.7 seconds ahead of the Austrian in the Manhey EMA Porsche.
Preining started the race second, alongside Feller, but lost this to Saturday’s race winner Maro Engel in the Mercedes-AMG MANN-FILTER machine. However, Engel was struggling due to the success ballast he was carrying from his race win, and although he managed to retain second until he pitted, he slipped back further after the stops, and eventually finished fifth.
This elevated Preining back into second, which he maintained until the end of the race, but couldn’t catch Feller in the lead.
Third was Luca Stolz, in the Mercedes-AMG Team HRT car. The Austrian started sixth and ran in the top 8 until the pit stops, when a quick stop enabled him to jump up through the field into third, where he finished, 3.8 seconds back Preining.
Marco Wittmann finished fourth in the Project 1 BMW, missing out on a podium for the second race in a row. However, the German started seventh and used strategy and bold overtakes to jump up through the field, and was chasing Stolz for third at the end. However, the BMW driver could not find a way past the Mercedes on the narrow Zandvoort track, and had to settle for fourth position.
Engel finished fifth after dropping from second on the grid, struggling with the weight added from success ballast and older used tyres. He pitted at the same time as Preining, running in front of him before the pit stops, but couldn’t get out in front of the Porsche and then lost a position to Wittmann as he got his used tyres back up to temperature.
The German did however manage to hold off Felle’s Abt Audi teammate Kelvin van der Linde. Engel exited the pits ahead of the Wittmann and the South African, but while Wittmann was able to find a way a through at the banked turn 3, K. van der Linde could not and was stuck behind the Mercedes-AMG for the rest of the race.
K. van der Linde had made his way through from 10th on the grid, overtaking Alberto Costa in the Emil Frey Ferrari — who’d later retire with mechanical problems — and Ayhancan Güven in the Kus Team Bernhard Porsche. He, and everyone else in the top 6, then got a boost when Patric Niederhauser, in the Tresor Orange 1 Audi, got handed a penalty lap due to an unsafe release in the pitlane with K. van der Linde, helping the South African finish sixth.
Güven finished seventh, with Niederhauser eighth. He’d run as high as fourth before the pitstops, but the unsafe release scuppered his chances of anything higher than where he finished.
Rounding out the top 10 was Preining’s Manthey teammate Dennis Olsen and Schubert Motorsport BMW’s Sheldon van der Linde.
