A rookie in the fast lane: Ricardo Feller has impressively confirmed his role as the secret favorite in the DTM. The Swiss secured his first victory in the traditional racing series at the sixth race of the season in Imola. The 22-year-old kept a cool head in the early safety car chaos in his Audi R8 LMS GT3 and in the end drove home victory in a commanding manner. After Rene Rast’s victory on Saturday, it was Abt’s second win of the third race weekend.
Feller also set a sporting exclamation point. Because last year’s GT Masters champion now occupies sixth place overall with 44 points. “It wasn’t an easy race, a start-finish victory would have been too easy. I’m overjoyed, that’s wonderful,” said Feller: “It’s one of the best days of my career.”
Sensational second: Dev Gore (Rosberg-Audi), who started the race from 22nd place on the grid and benefited from an early pit stop during the safety car period and was flushed to the front. “I was surprised by the opportunity we got. We discussed it beforehand, but when you see yourself up front it’s something else again. I knew we had the pace. But it wasn’t easy, the To save tires. I’m speechless,” he said.
Van der Linde defends overall lead
Third was Marco Wittmann in the Walkenhorst-BMW. Behind them, Lucas Auer in the Winward-Mercedes and Sheldon van der Linde in the Walkenhorst BMW finished fourth and fifth. As a result, Van der Linde defended his overall lead and now has 80 points. Second is Mirko Bortolotti (Grasser-Lamborghini), who has 68 points after his tenth place. Behind: Nico Müller (Rosberg-Audi/62) and Auer (60).
After a boring race on Saturday, there was a lot more activity on Sunday, also due to an early safety car phase after Rolf Ineichen and Thomas Preining crashed. After a strong fourth place on Saturday in the Bernhard team’s Porsche 911 GT3 R, the Austrian went home empty-handed on Sunday.
Things were already going smoothly during the safety car phase, because since this season the drivers can complete their mandatory pit stop during this phase – which the majority of the field did, with the corresponding chaos in the pit lane as a result and a mixed order due to clear differences in the the quality of the stops.
Glock misses top ten
On the track it was similar at the restart, it was high, chaotic and action-packed. Pole setter Feller quickly regained the lead that Gore had surprisingly held and then never gave up the victory. Gore, who as a debutant in 2021 has not yet scored any points in the DTM, impressively defended second place. Overall, there was a veritable orgy of failures in the sixth race of the season, ten cars did not see the finish line.
Timo Glock also benefited from the chaos. Having started the race from 20th place on the grid, he narrowly missed out on the top ten on his guest start with Ceccato Racing in eleventh place.
