BMW M4 GT3 at the DTM in Spielberg.
26-09-2022 12:57 - MOTORSPORT
The penultimate race weekend of the DTM season at the Red Bull Ring (AUT) did not go according to plan for Sheldon van der Linde (RSA), but it ended with him defending his overall lead. The South African finished eleventh in both races and just missed out on scoring points, but still has an eleven-point lead in the drivers' standings going into the season finale in Hockenheim (GER) in two weeks' time. Philipp Eng (AUT) delivered the best performance of the BMW M works drivers at his home round in Austria and just missed the podium on Sunday in fifth place. His ten points helped Schubert Motorsport go into the last two races with a 43-point lead in the team classification.
Van der Linde had to start from 16th place on Saturday after a poor qualifying session and finished 11th, just missing out on the points. However, in his race to catch up, he exceeded the track limits far too often and received a penalty of nine grid positions on Sunday. Sixth place in qualifying turned into starting position 15. When he then spun on the wet track on the first lap, he was right at the end of the field. Although he caught up very quickly with slicks on a drying track in the final phase, it was no longer possible to do better than eleventh place. His Schubert team colleague Eng, who was twelfth on Saturday, impressed on Sunday in fifth place in qualifying in heavy rain. After a good start in the race, he was on course for the podium for a long time. But in the final laps his rain tires gave out too much on the increasingly dry track and he dropped back from third to fifth place. Marco Wittmann (GER) made it in his #11 Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 not in the top ten in both races. In doing so, he suffered from the fact that he was not able to secure a good grid position in qualifying. In the end, the two-time DTM champion finished 14th and 12th. On Sunday, Wittmann was temporarily in fifth place, but like Eng, he also lost a lot of ground in the last laps on wet tyres. The #10 BMW M4 GT3 drove this weekend on behalf of the sick Esteban Muth (BEL) Leon Koehler (GER). He performed very well on his debut in the BMW M4 GT3 and finished 13th directly behind Wittmann on Sunday. On Saturday he retired after a good race.