Manthey EMA’s Preining fell behind both van de Linde and Feller at one stage, but quickly repassed the Abt Audi duo to claim his first win of the 2024 season and move up to second in the standings.
At the start of the race, the reigning champion pulled away cleanly from pole position to hold the lead over Feller, but couldn’t shake off the Swiss driver and his team-mate van der Linde, who had got the jump on the SSR Performance Lamborghini of Mirko Bortolotti.
At the start of lap 4, Feller positioned his Audi around the outside of Preining’s Porsche into Turn 1, which gave him the inside line into the following right-hander. Despite running slightly over the grass, Feller was able to barge his way past the Austrian, snatching the lead for the first time in the race.
A brief safety car period for Clemens Schmid’s Dorr McLaren threatened to upset the status quo, but it wasn’t until the pit window opened after 20 minutes of racing that the order at the front changed again.
Preining was the first of the leaders to dive into the pits, with Feller and van der Linde coming in on successive laps.
Feller did manage to retain the lead initially out of the pits, but Preining’s tyres were already up to temperature and he found his way past the Audi on lap 18 to grab the top spot again.
However, the time they spent battling on track left them vulnerable to an overcut from van der Linde, who duly leapfrogged both of them by completing his mandatory pitstop a lap later.
This put Preining in the worst possible position, sandwiched by the two Abt drivers and with the risk of losing second place as well. But the 25-year-old managed to outfox his rivals, streaming past van der Linde with a bold move at the hairpin to make the decisive pass for victory.
Feller also cleared van der Linde a few corners later, although the stewards later asked him to hand back the position for an illegal overtake.
Before Feller and van der Linde could trade spots, the safety car was deployed yet again, this time for a collision between Maximilian Paul and Luca Stolz that left both their cars beached in the gravel at Turn 6.
It was only when the race resumed with 13 minutes left on the clock that Feller could give way to his team-mate, by which time Preining had already mastered the restart to cement his position at the front.
Van der Linde, despite having 20kg of success ballast after his victory on Saturday, kept the pressure up on Preining till the end, but the factory Porsche driver was relatively untroubled as he took the chequered flag with a winning margin of 1.4s.
Feller ended up a further 1.5s back, while Bortolotti ended up fourth in the sole-surviving SSR Lamborghini after team-mate Nicki Thiim was forced to retire early with a brake issue.
Three-time DTM champion Rene Rast managed to drag his Schubert BMW to as high as fifth after starting 13th on the grid, but an ill-fated passing attempt on Bortolotti at the final turn allowed the GRT Lamborghini of Luca Englster to take advantage of the situation and complete the top five.
Rast still managed to finish as the top BMW in sixth ahead of the Winward Mercedes of Maro Engel, who put in an even more impressive recovery drive after being shuffled to the back of the grid for a technical infringement in qualifying.
Schubert BMW’s Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann were eighth and ninth respectively, while Lucas Auer completed the top 10 in the second of the two Winward Mercedes cars.
Only 16 cars finished the race, meaning everyone except 16th-placed Ben Dorr (Dorr McLaren) scored points.
DTM Lausitzring Race Results
| Cla | Nº | Driver | Car / Engine | Laps | Time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 91 | Thomas Preining | Porsche | 42 | 1:01'51.739 | |
| 2 | 3 | K.van der Linde | Audi | 42 | 1:01'53.180 | 1.441 |
| 3 | 7 | Ricardo Feller | Audi | 42 | 1:01'54.822 | 3.083 |
| 4 | 92 | Mirko Bortolotti | Lamborghini | 42 | 1:01'55.460 | 3.721 |
| 5 | 19 | Luca Engstler | Lamborghini | 42 | 1:01'59.240 | 7.501 |
| 6 | 33 | René Rast | BMW | 42 | 1:02'00.343 | 8.604 |
| 7 | 130 | Maro Engel | Mercedes | 42 | 1:02'02.378 | 10.639 |
| 8 | 31 | S.van der Linde | BMW | 42 | 1:02'03.243 | 11.504 |
| 9 | 11 | Marco Wittmann | BMW | 42 | 1:02'05.235 | 13.496 |
| 10 | 22 | Lucas Auer | Mercedes | 42 | 1:02'05.882 | 14.143 |
| 11 | 90 | Ayhancan Guven | Porsche | 42 | 1:02'07.525 | 15.786 |
| 12 | 36 | Arjun Maini | Mercedes | 42 | 1:02'07.877 | 16.138 |
| 13 | 69 | T.Vermeulen | Ferrari | 42 | 1:02'08.407 | 16.668 |
| 14 | 14 | Jack Aitken | Ferrari | 42 | 1:02'08.820 | 17.081 |
| 15 | 63 | C.Engelhart | Lamborghini | 42 | 1:02'09.461 | 17.722 |
| 16 | 25 | Ben Dörr | McLaren | 42 | 1:02'13.945 | 22.206 |
| 71 | Maximilian Paul | Lamborghini | 18 | 26'53.650 | Retirement | |
| 4 | Luca Stolz | Mercedes | 18 | 27'27.136 | Retirement | |
| 85 | Clemens Schmid | McLaren | 3 | 4'27.173 | Retirement | |
| 94 | Nicki Thiim | Lamborghini | 3 | 4'43.913 | Retirement |
