Weekly Racing Roundup (8.27.18)

Photo: BMW

Eriksson Takes First DTM Win as Series Makes Night Race Debut

Joel Eriksson secured his first DTM win on Sunday while the German series completed its first ever night races at Misano. 

BMW Team RBM driver Eriksson led Edoardo Mortara and Rene Rast to the line in Sunday’s Race 2 after a successful strategy gamble.

The Swede elected to start the race on slick tires in the unpredictable conditions, and initially dropped back to 18th place while most other drivers ran rain tires.

Conditions looked set to improve but Eriksson chose rain tires, which paid off when the rain came back later in the race and his rivals had to make a second pit stop.

Paul Di Resta won the first race on Saturday and a sixth-place finish on Sunday was enough to propel him into the points lead ahead of Gary Paffett.

He finished ahead of Robin Frijns and Mortara in Race 1 and the Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Remus driver comes away from Italy with 186 points to Paffett’s 177.

News & Notes

***Alex Zanardi put in a strong performance as the DTM guest driver, finishing fifth in Race 2. The Italian drove a converted BMW M4 DTM to accommodate for his injuries.

***“In some parts of the race, my speed was okay, but I was worried as I didn’t want to get into the way of anyone,” he said. “Thanks to the DTM family for welcoming me as a 51-year-old rookie in an incomparable way. I can hardly wait to go and have a beer and celebrate with my team now.”

***Team Parker Racing has added to this weekend’s International GT Open field at Silverstone with a Bentley Continental GT3 driven by Ian Loggie and Callum Macleod. The British GT Championship regulars have also entered select Blancpain GT Series rounds this year.

***Eric De Doncker is set to return to the GT4 European Series for the finale at Nürburgring with a Ford Mustang GT4 entered by his Motorsport 98 team. He will drive the car solo and says the deal came about after a conversation with Multimatic boss Larry Holt at the Six Hours of Spa in May.

***Next Monday’s edition of the Weekly Racing Roundup will include reports from GT Open at Silverstone, GT4 European Series and Blancpain GT Sports Club at the Hungaroring, the VLN race and the Pirelli World Challenge TCR finale at Watkins Glen.

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.