HOCKENHEIM, Germany — Kelvin van der Linde once again has all the trump cards in his hand in the championship battle.
The Audi driver from Abt Sportsline won the penultimate DTM race of 2024 on Saturday at the Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg.
Watch Sunday’s race on SPEED SPORT 1.
This put him back in the lead of the standings. The South African had to work hard for his third win of the season and, especially in the second half of the race, had to fend off the repeatedly attacking Lucas Auer from the Mercedes-AMG Team Mann-Filter.
However, Van der Linde showed no nerves and crossed the finish line first after 37 laps.
“That was perhaps the most important victory of my career,” van der Linde said. “After a few laps, it became clear to me that the fight against Lucas Auer would go to the end. I defended the lead with all means at my disposal, and luckily it was enough. We discussed many scenarios beforehand. Leading the championship before the last race was not really a realistic option.”
Auer finished in second place with a gap of 0.508 seconds, while Ayhancan Güven celebrated his first podium finish of the season in third place in the Porsche 911 GT3 R from Manthey EMA. The previous overall leader Mirko Bortolotti finished fifth, two points behind Kelvin van der Linde in the table and explained, “I had a great start and moved up to fourth place,” Bortolotti said.
“Unfortunately, I lost the position after contact with Maro Engel. In the end, I finished in fifth place, which I just managed to save until the finish. On Sunday, we have to get everything out of our car again.”
As It Happened
Before the start of the 15th DTM championship race, teams, drivers and spectators were in high tension on Saturday afternoon. Van der Linde had reduced the gap to the top to twelve points with his third pole of the season in the morning and maintained first place after the start ahead of Auer and Güven.
Bortolotti, who was still in the lead, got off to a good start in the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 from SSR Performance and moved up from seventh to fourth place. Behind him, third-placed Maro Engel in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 was in fifth place. The top quintet was able to pull away from the rest of the field as the race progressed, but Auer kept appearing in Kelvin van der Linde’s rear-view mirror.
Engel was the first driver to complete his mandatory pit stop and was then able to overtake Bortolotti, who had changed his tires one lap later and was driving on cold tires. While Güven held on to third place, Auer took the lead after a late tire change. But Kelvin van der Linde launched a successful counterattack a short time later – thus the order of the top five was restored, except for Engel and Bortolotti swapping places.
Then Auer went on the attack. He repeatedly attacked Kelvin van der Linde, sometimes pushing his Mercedes-AMG GT3 next to his Audi. The South African made no mistakes, however, and fended off every attack from the Austrian until the end. The two top drivers were within 0.8 seconds of each other for almost the entire second half of the race and offered the spectators in the well-attended grandstands at the Hockenheimring a motorsport spectacle. Güven took third place, four seconds behind, followed by Engel and Bortolotti.
Jules Gounon made a successful DTM debut in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 from the Mercedes-AMG Team HRT. The Frenchman, who lives in Andorra, stepped in at short notice for the ill Luca Stolz, drove the fastest lap of the race and ended up in sixth place, within striking distance of Bortolotti. René Rast showed a strong recovery and improved from 16th to seventh place in the BMW M4 GT3 from Schubert Motorsport. Gounon’s team-mate Arjun Maini (IND) finished eighth ahead of the second Schubert Motorsport BMW with Marco Wittmann at the wheel.
Nicki Thiim from the SSR Performance team finished the 15th and penultimate DTM race in 10th place.