With a dominant win in the second race at the Nürburgring sprint circuit, DTM points’ leader Nico Müller made an impressive comeback.
After his bad luck on Saturday as Müller had to make do with fifth following a spin, the Swiss was full of additional ambition and was unbeatable on the following day. His title rival and teammate Robin Frijns (NED, Audi) was second across the finish line, almost twelve seconds in arrears.
Nevertheless, it was a good Sunday for the Abt team that celebrated an impressive double success. Defending champion René Rast (GER, Audi) rounded out the podium. Once again, the DTM’s ‘big three’ were on the rostrum.
In the manufacturers’ standings, the title has been sealed after the second third of the season already: at 872 points, the brand from Ingolstadt is beyond reach in the lead of the standings. At 356 points, opponent BMW is no longer in a position to close the gap.
There was already a surprise in qualifying, after which not only the ‘usual suspects’ found themselves in the top three. Ferdinand Habsburg moved up into the trio of the fastest drivers after posting the second-fastest time. A small sensation and the best qualifying result to date for the young Austrian and his Audi customer team WRT.
In the race, however, Habsburg was unable to make full use of his pace and ended up in sixth place. BMW’s customer team ART also shone in qualifying with seventh place for Robert Kubica (POL), but ran out of luck during the race.
Müller with superior pace at the start of the race
Nico Müller already laid the foundation for his commanding race win shortly after the start: while pole-sitter Frijns initially led the field, the Swiss already overtook Habsburg soon after the race got underway and then put Frijns under pressure. On lap seven, Müller took the lead and continuously extended his margin.
Having started fourth on the grid, René Rast drove a race without attracting attention and only once briefly had second place in sight as Frijns rejoined the race after his mandatory pit stop with cold tyres just in front of him, but the Dutchman kept cool and managed to keep Rast at bay.
Even though everything was settled at the front pretty soon, spectators in bright sunshine in the Eifel were able to enjoy entertaining racing action in the midfield with numerous position fights.
Van der Linde again best-placed BMW driver, bad luck for Kubica
In the BMW camp, it was again South African Sheldon van der Linde who made his mark by ending up fourth as the best-placed BMW driver. His team RBM had cleverly outfoxed opponent Marco Wittmann (GER, BMW) with an undercut so that the latter had to make do with fifth place.
Further down in the field, Philipp Eng (AUT, BMW), Lucas Auer (AUT, BMW) and Jamie Green (GBR, Audi) staged entertaining position fights. Green, however, had bad luck and had to park his RS 5 DTM in the pits with technical problems just before the end of the race.
Ex-Formula 1 driver Robert Kubica (POL, BMW), who had caught the attention with a strong seventh place on the grid, had to retire from the race with gearbox failure while running in sixth place.
After the twelfth of this season’s 18 races, Nico Müller has further extended his lead in the drivers’ standings and remains in front at 242 points. Frijns remains close at 224 points, Rast is third with 195 points.
DTM action continues from 9-11 October at Zolder in Belgium. And motorsport fans can look forward to thrilling racing action next year as well, because the DTM will be racing from 2021 once again, with changed regulations, but with an equal amount of excitement and fascination.
