Felipe Fraga driving the #74 Red Bull Alpha Tauri AF Corse Ferrari took a lights to flag victory in the second DTM race at the Norisring today with Mirko Bortolotti in the #63 GRT Lamborghini taking second and René Rast in the #33 Team ABT Audi jumping Marco Wittmann’s #11 Walkenhorst BMW in the pit stops to take third place.
DTM NORISRING | RACE 1 REPORT | QUALIFYING 2 REPORT | RACE 2 REPORT
After the crash fest that was race one the drivers received a collective rocket from the race director for the driving standards or lack of that were on display in race one. 13 cars failed to finish the first race and Franck Perrera making his debut in the series in a GRT Lamborghini was unable to start today’s race as a result of the damage he suffered in race one.
The warnings seemed to work as the grid made it’s way through turn one with little incident and saw the top three of Fraga, Bortolotti and Wittmann holding their starting positions at the end of the first lap.
As the field sorted itself out the only incidents involved Mikael Grenier in the Mercedes AMG Team Gruppe M Racing who was unfortunate to take a small contact which resulted in a loss of cooling whilst David Schumacher in the Mercedes AMG Team Winward car was also forced to retire with cooling issues after a coming together with Ricardo Feller. Feller’s Team ABT Sportsline Audi survived the contact but went on to retire several laps further on after making contact with a wall.
With the pit window open no cars wanted to take the opportunity for an early stop and instead there was a slow trickle of cars into the pit lane. The first of these was Maxi Buhk in the Team Mucke Motorsport Mercedes AMG however he went on to complete just a single further lap before returning to the pits and retiring.
Having built a near 3 second lead to the chasing Bortolotti, Fraga chose to stay on track until the 46th lap and with just 16 minutes of the race remaining. Bortolotti followed him in but was unable to gain on the Ferrari. René Rast did gain having stopped a couple of laps earlier he was able to leap frog Marco Wittmann to take P3 from the German.
Bortolotti started to pick up fastest laps in the final minutes but it was not enough to worry the 3 second lead that Fraga held.
The result see’s Mirko Bortolotti take the lead in the championship with a nine point lead over former leader Sheldon van der Linde who could only finish in P15 in race 2 and P22 in race one. Rene Rast holds on to P3 with 79 points followed by Nico Muller on 62 and Lucas Auer on 60.
The DTM series will take an 8 week break now until the 26th – 28th August where it will return at the Nürburgring.
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