Bortolotti blunder lets in the brothers
DTM NURBURGRING (DEU) 27-28 AUGUST ROUND 5/8
If Mirko Bortolotti doesn’t win the 2022 DTM title, the inquest will surely point to the Grasser Lamborghini man’s weekend at the Nurburgring as a principal factor.
The pre-event championship leader’s nine-point advantage became a 21-point deficit to Schubert BMW’S Sheldon van der Linde after he came away emptyhanded from a weekend when second and fifth were there for the taking. Bortolotti has been a study in consistency all year, fast everywhere, albeit without winning a race. But the desire to right that statistic proved his undoing.
Dense fog that caused Saturday’s qualifying session to be cancelled meant the grid was set in championship order, handing Bortolotti a free pole. The mist took most of the day to clear and the race finally began, almost four hours after the intended start, in treacherously slippery conditions. With only one slow formation lap, most took it easy on their cold tyres, but not Felipe Fraga, who made what his Red Bull Ferrari team boss Ron Reichert termed “probably the move of the year” by charging up from sixth to second at the start.
“Fair play to the guy,” recounted Bortolotti’s fellow front-row starter van der Linde later. “I don’t know where he came from, but he came fast!”
Fraga led by the end of the opening lap, but couldn’t pull away in the slippery conditions. Bortolotti pitted one lap later than the Ferrari and briefly got ahead, but Fraga used his warmer tyres to repass around the outside at Turn 3. Yet Bortolotti wasn’t done. He roared back onto Fraga’s tail, setting the fastest lap in his pursuit, before making an ill-fated move to the inside of the final corner with nine laps remaining. Bortolotti understeered on a wet patch and clattered into Fraga, sending both spinning into eventual retirement. “I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was actually happening,” said a watching van der Linde, who raced past to a third win of the year.
Amid the confusion, van der Linde’s brother Kelvin passed Abt Audi teammate Ricardo Feller to complete a historic 1-2 for the South African brothers. He’d expertly executed a long first stint after being shuffled from 13th on the grid to
20th on lap one.
Feller held off Maxi Gotz (Winward Mercedes) for third, the reigning champion putting in his best showing of the year after a combative race. Gotz had turned around Luca Stolz (HRT Mercedes) on the opening lap and opportunistically ambushed Rene Rast (Abt Audi) and Dennis Olsen – the
SSR Porsche’s steering broke following their three-wide moment – to run ahead of Feller until a spinning Rast, hit by Olsen’s teammate Laurens Vanthoor, forced him off-line.
Stolz finished the opener 17th, but stylishly bounced back on Sunday as Bortolotti again found strife. Stolz advanced from seventh to fourth in the early stages, passing front-row starter Kelvin van der
Linde and Olsen before a safety car – called for an irate Rast being dumped into the gravel by David Schumacher – coincided with the pit window opening.
Poleman Sheldon van der Linde had led from fast-starting team-mate Philipp Eng, but the Austrian was duly removed from contention because DTM rules prohibit double-stacking during a safety car. Stolz’s mechanics did the rest of the job to jump him ahead of erstwhile leader van der Linde and Thomas Preining, whose Bernhard Porsche he’d tracked early on.
Stolz then stormed into the lead at the restart by passing 17-year-old debutant Theo Oeverhaus, the only driver who hadn’t pitted under the safety car, and disappeared into the distance to secure his maiden DTM win by 4.5s over Olsen. By contrast, Sheldon van der Linde plummeted to 10th, while Bortolotti – docked five places on the grid for the Fraga clash – moved up to fifth behind Lucas Auer (Winward Mercedes) and Kelvin van der Linde. Holding position would have trimmed his deficit by nine points but, perhaps eager to compensate for Saturday, he once more put himself in danger in pursuit of a mere two further points.
After much patient stalking, Bortolotti got fully alongside van der Linde’s Audi into Turn 4, but contact was made that cut the Lamborghini’s left-rear tyre and put the Italian out, allowing van der
Linde’s Bmw-racing brother to extend his championship margin by two points.
Just how crucial they’ll be will emerge over the final six races. It’s by no means over yet, but Bortolotti’s task is now much harder than it perhaps needed to be.