DTM Oschersleben: Pole for Preining, anger for leader Thiim!
· Yahoo Sports
An exciting starting position for the kickoff of the second half of the DTM season at Oschersleben: Thomas Preining, who had threatened to retire after a difficult Norisring weekend, secured pole position for Saturday's race with a 1:21.862. With this, Porsche strikes back!
"That's how fast things can change," a delighted Preining told ran.de about his first pole of the season at his favorite track. "This is an absolute Porsche track; we have always been quite fast here. And I am simply happy that things are looking better for us again, that we are back at the front where we belong."
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How much did the huge disappointment at the Norisring - where the Porsche was not competitive and he slammed the Balance of Performance (BoP) in the DTM - weigh on him? "It didn't really eat away at me - in the end, I moved on relatively quickly because the whole situation at the Norisring was very extreme," he says.
Lamborghini and AMG in the chasing role
"But in the end, in motorsport and especially in the DTM, things often move quickly from the very back to the very front - and just as quickly, they can go backwards again." Taking second place in a surprise move was Abt Lamborghini driver Luca Engstler (+0.070), who slotted in ahead of the Mercedes-AMG duo of Maro Engel (+0.113) and Lucas Auer (+0.137) in third and fourth.
"It feels great," Engstler told ran.de, reflecting on his "top lap" and the best qualifying result so far for the new Lamborghini Temerario GT3, despite its ongoing challenges. "It has been a mixed year, of course; we have a lot of work ahead of us with the new car, but it is nice that we can keep setting highlights."
Chaser Engel gains ground on Thiim in the championship
Maro Engel, who qualified third, also expressed satisfaction with the result, having reduced his gap to championship leader Nicki Thiim by one point to eight points. "We maximized the package today," the Winward Mercedes driver said to ran.de. "So far this weekend, Thomas and especially the Porsche have been dominant. Therefore, we are happy that the gap is relatively small."
Speaking of Porsche: Preining's teammate Ricardo Feller finished eleventh, 0.424 seconds behind, while Bastian Buus, who is struggling in the Land Porsche at Oschersleben and lost 0.568 seconds, ended up 14th.
Big anger for Thiim: "Maybe I should quit too"
While the championship contenders representing Mercedes AMG put themselves in a good position, everything went wrong for DTM leader Nicki Thiim. The Comtoyou Aston Martin driver could only manage 18th place, trailing by 0.803 seconds.
"Didn't get any superpowers," the Dane fumed to ran.de regarding the BoP - and the comments made by Preining and Schubert BMW driver Marco Wittmann after the Norisring race.
He said he had "fun" reading "all the articles with Mr. Wittmann and Preining - 'we are quitting' and so on. Yeah, maybe I should do that too - quit. Then maybe I'll get 50 kilos taken out and more power here."
Thiim is particularly bitter about being penalized on a track "where you simply need big balls." It is not his "problem if those guys can't get around there and then a conclusion is drawn that slows us down completely ... Now I'm the one suffering. Now I'm standing here saying I'm quitting now."
BMW and Ferrari in the midfield
The BMW drivers Marco Wittmann (+0.542) and Kelvin van der Linde (+0.621) also failed to reach the front of the field at Schubert's home race, finishing 13th and 15th respectively.
And how did the Emil Frey team fare, whose technical director Jurg Flach had already complained about the classification at Oschersleben before the weekend? Matteo Cairoli, who sits fourth in the championship as the primary challenger to the leading trio of Thiim, Engel, and Auer, finished in eighth place, 0.355 seconds off the pace.
Flach had stated that internal calculations showed a deficit of 0.3 seconds compared to last year. Cairoli's teammate Thierry Vermeulen (+0.671) could not improve past 16th place.
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