The Lamborghini team Grasser has followed through on its announcement and filed an appeal against the disqualification of Mirko Bortolotti at Oschersleben within the deadline. The German governing body DMSB has officially confirmed this. After the disqualification, the team had 96 hours - so until 5 p.m. on Monday - to do so.
Within one week, the appeal must now also be substantiated in writing - then it will be definitively confirmed that there will be a hearing before the DMSB Court of Appeal in Frankfurt on whether the contested wheel bearing is legal or illegal. The date can only be set once the statement of grounds has been submitted.
But is there now the possibility of a stalemate in the DTM title fight? "We will make sure that the appeal is heard before the season finale," ADAC motorsport boss Thomas Voss promises in conversation with Motorsport-Total.com. "We would like to have a nice championship ceremony at Hockenheim." The DMSB also expects a result within the next four weeks.
How the appeal case affects the title fight
In the DTM paddock, some had doubted that the Grasser team would really appeal against the disqualification. But team boss Gottfried Grasser believes, according to his own statements, that he is in the right and that the wheel bearing complied with the regulations.
The decision has a major impact on the title fight, because until the appeal hearing the current result, with Maro Engel as the winner, is provisional. Should Grasser succeed with its appeal, DTM leader Engel, who leads Thomas Preining by one point with four races remaining, would lose five points.
Preining would lose four points, which would put the two level on points at the top of the DTM, with the "Grello" driver as DTM leader because of his two wins. Third-placed Auer and fourth-placed Thiim would lose only one point.
If the appeal is successful: Engel with the wrong success ballast!
And there is another aspect: Engel had to race in Saturday's race at the Nürburgring with 20 kilograms of success ballast for the win. But if the Winward Mercedes driver were subsequently stripped of the win again and received only 20 points instead of 25, then he should actually have had to race at the Nürburgring with only 10 kilograms.
Incidentally, considering the weight, Engel finished a strong sixth - only 2.3 seconds behind third-placed Marco Wittmann.
Would a protest be possible?
But could the Mercedes-AMG team Winward protest the race result on Saturday at the Nurburgring if Grasser is successful, because the race was run under false assumptions?
According to Thomas Jäger, who acts as sporting director for the DTM division, the scenario that Engel could theoretically lose his Oschersleben win again was discussed at Mercedes-AMG on Friday.
"That is a very strange situation, but with the rules as they are, it is not worth racking your brains over it," he explains. "If it comes to that, it would be stupid, but it was a sensible race. Maro coped very well with the weight. I would also have thought he would struggle more. So all good."
Decisions covered by the regulations
In fact, the regulations set out exactly what happens with success ballast in the case of pending proceedings. "If the result of a race is provisional two hours before the start of the following race, the allocation of the success ballast will be made according to the provisional result at that time," Article 26.2 of the Sporting Regulations states.
The fact that Bortolotti also had to race with 20 kilograms of success ballast despite the disqualification is also clarified: "In case of a pending appeal, the Appellant will be allocated the success ballast according to his original ranking. A protest against missing Ballast of Success due to a change of result after the above-mentioned time is not allowed."
The aim is to prevent a driver from completing the race without success ballast after a disqualification and only then going to appeal.
