Van der Linde Dominates Lausitzring Race 1

Sheldon van der Linde took his second career victory in DTM in dominant fashion, scoring a lights-to-flag win after taking the lead at the start at the Lausitzring.

The South African started the race in second position alongside polesitter Lucas Auer, but the No. 31 Schubert Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 beat Auer’s Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo off the line and into turn one to capture the lead of the race.

From there, Van der Linde remained in the lead through the pitstop cycle, having to briefly withstand pressure from the Team HRT Mercedes of Luca Stolz.

However, he remained out front through slightly rainy conditions to take a convincing win.

The 23-year-old took his second race win from 55 starts in the series, having previously taken his maiden victory at Assen in 2020.

Stolz himself had moved into third place in the opening exchanges and was able to gain another position thanks to a strong pitstop from his team.

In doing so, he was able to finish second and thus left polesitter Lucas Auer to complete the podium in third place.

Arjun Maini put in a strong performance to move from sixth at the start to fourth, where he would also finish.

It is the Indian driver’s second-best result in the series following his second place at the Norisring last year.

Maro Engel finished fifth, ahead of Mirko Bortolotti and Laurens Vanthoor.

Rene Rast finished eighth, while Nick Cassidy secured a late ninth-placed finish by surpassing the Team Winward Mercedes of reigning champion Maximilian Goetz, who finished the race in tenth place.

Maximilian Buhk came home in eleventh, leading Esteban Muth, Nicki Thiim, Rolf Ineichen and Marius Zug, who completed the top fifteen.

An unusually high number of drivers retired from the race with mechanical issues, with notable retirees including Thomas Preining, Nico Mueller, Marco Wittmann, Felipe Fraga and Philipp Eng.

The Abt Sportsline pairing of Ricardo Feller and Kelvin van der Linde also failed to finish, with Feller retiring after a right rear puncture and Van der Linde ending his race early after running through the gravel on the opening lap along with Mikael Grenier.

RESULTS: Race 1