Van der Linde Dominates Race 1; Takes Points Lead

Kelvin van der Linde captured the points lead in DTM by taking a dominant victory in a wet Race 1 at the Nürburgring.

The South African, driving the No. 3 ABT Sportsline Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II started the 60-minute contest from pole position and converted that to a 15.232-second margin over Mirko Bortolotti.

Bortolotti entered the race with a narrow, five-point advantage over Van der Linde in the championship, but thanks to the pole position and race win the Audi driver assumed the points lead by a single point.

The No. 92 SSR Performance Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 ran in second place throughout, although he faced pressure from the No. 130 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Maro Engel for much of the race.

Engel overtook Winward stablemate Lucas Auer in the opening exchanges, with the No. 22 Mercedes-AMG finishing fourth as Jack Aitken completed the top five.

Marco Wittmann finished sixth, while Thomas Preining passed Nicki Thiim after a late-race duel to capture seventh place.

Thiim saw a potential run at a top-five finish upended when he was tagged into a spin in Turn 2 by Preining’s Manthey EMA teammate Ayhancan Guven.

Guven was ordered to serve three penalty laps for the incident, with an additional penalty handed out for crossing the white line at pit exit.

Ricardo Feller took ninth in the No. 7 Audi ahead of Arjun Maini, Rene Rast and Luca Stolz.

Sheldon van der Linde, Franck Perera and Maximilian Paul picked up the final points in the race.

RESULTS: Race 1