World of Sport: DTM; Australian Supercars; World Rallycross; NASCAR Cup; Motogp
Abt Audi drivers Robin Frijns and Nico Muller shared the spoils as the 2020
DTM season paid its final visit to the Nurburgring, this time on the sprint layout.
Frijns got the first blood on Saturday to secure his second successive win, aided by an incident involving title rival Muller that dropped him out of contention.
After qualifying second, Frijns breezed past polesitter Rene Rast into Turn 1 and then consolidated his lead in the opening stages. Three safety-car interventions – a record in 2020 – eradicated Frijns’s advantage, but the Dutchman was able to make a perfect getaway at each restart to ensure his victory was never in doubt.
Muller got sandwiched by the BMWS of Marco Wittmann and Philipp Eng at the first safety-car restart and was then unlucky to be tagged by Audi stablemate Jamie
Green at Turn 2, the contact pitching him into a spin and leaving him facing in the wrong direction. After slipping to last, the championship leader was able to stage an impressive recovery drive to finish fifth, stopping early on lap nine of 39 and taking advantage of multiple safety-car appearances to recoup further ground. Remarkably, fifth place remains Muller’s joint-worst result of his campaign, two thirds into the season.
Following the drama in the opening encounter of the weekend, race two turned out to be a straightforward affair for Muller as he clinched his fifth victory of the season in 12 races. The Swiss made a clean start from third to pass Ferdinand Habsburg, who had delivered a stellar lap in qualifying to place his privateer WRT Audi on the front row. After a few laps running second behind Frijns, Muller slowly started eating into his team-mate’s advantage and was able to close the gap sufficiently by lap seven to take a lead he would never relinquish, crossing the line with a winning margin of more than 11 seconds.
Frijns fell into the clutches of Rast after dropping behind Muller, but was able to pull clear of the two-time champion after the pitstop cycle, the gap between the two over seven seconds at the chequered flag. Rast’s fading pace in the second stint highlighted a deficit the Team Rosberg driver faced to the Abt Audi duo throughout the weekend.
Even in the Saturday opener, Rast was unable to break within half a second of
Frijns to make a move, relinquishing the chance to score big points on a day when Muller finished off the podium.
That means Rast now sits 47 points adrift of Muller in the standings, nearly the sum of two DTM victories. Frijns, however, has slashed his deficit to Muller from 39 to 18.
The BMW M4s were unable to match the pace of the leading RS5S, with double champion Wittmann’s third place in race one the best the marque could manage, allowing Audi to wrap up the manufacturers’ title with three rounds still to run. Much was expected from Robert Kubica after he qualified his customer ART BMW a strong seventh for the second encounter. But after running as high as sixth, he was forced to pull out of the race with a gearbox issue.