– Hessian Finn Wiebelhaus was the discovery of the DTM weekend in Spielberg: The 19-year-old HRT driver, who had his experienced teammate Arjun Maini under control during his DTM debut, almost took pole position in the Ford Mustang GT3 Evo with a gap of 0.085 seconds and sensationally started from the front row.
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Wiebelhaus, who eventually finished eighth, also impressed in the race report with a fierce wheel-to-wheel duel over four corners against runner-up Lucas Auer in the first lap, including several contacts. “He drove great all weekend, especially in qualifying. And even in the race, it felt like he was very experienced,” Auer praised the rookie. “He will have a great career.”
Wiebelhaus also enjoyed the duel against the Mercedes-AMG factory driver. “It was a cool duel,” he says. “We drove side by side, exchanged paint. That’s fun, that’s what the fans want to see.”
Wiebelhaus after debut: “DTM toughness is different”
In the end, the Landgraf-Mercedes driver prevailed because he was on the inside line in the penultimate corner. The HRT driver, who won the ADAC GT Masters title last year and is in only his third GT3 year, became aware of the much tougher approach in the DTM in Spielberg.
“The toughness in the race is definitely different than in GT Masters or GT World Challenge,” he said on Sunday in an interview with Motorsport-Total.com. “I was certainly a bit surprised yesterday. Today I think I held up quite well and can’t blame myself. If it continues like this, something like that wouldn’t surprise me anymore.”
Highlights DTM Race Spielberg 2
Wiebelhaus was not timid on Saturday either, when he nudged Ricardo Feller’s Manthey Porsche on the approach to turn three – and luckily avoided a penalty.
Teammate Maini clearly in the shadow: Was it the car?
How does the comparison with Maini turn out, who was still one of the strongest Mercedes-AMG drivers in 2024 and is already in his sixth DTM season? In the first qualifying, Wiebelhaus was 0.165 seconds faster in 13th place than the Indian in 16th, and in the second qualifying he took 0.406 seconds from Maini, who only finished 15th.
And Wiebelhaus’s fastest race laps were also quicker than his teammate’s on both days: by 0.072 seconds on Saturday and 0.145 seconds on Sunday.
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As is heard, Maini has been struggling with the performance of his car since the DTM test in Spielberg and is currently unable to extract the maximum. “We feel that power is missing – whether from the gearbox, the engine, or the drivetrain. We are currently checking that,” explains HRT team boss Ulrich Fritz. Wiebelhaus’s debut was “mega,” but “what we saw on Sunday is certainly not the normal performance gap between Finn and Arjun.”
Why Wiebelhaus could not hold second place in the race
But why did Wiebelhaus drop from second to eighth on Sunday? In the first lap, he positioned himself on the unfavorable outside line on the approach to turn four and had to let the eventual winner Maro Engel pass, and four corners later Auer also passed on the inside, making Wiebelhaus fourth.
“Then the tires went off a bit and after the first pit stop we lost important track position,” explains Wiebelhaus, who delayed his first stop for a long time, on ProSieben.
The HRT youngster was in seventh place behind Nicki Thiim and Jules Gounon before the second stop – and the attempt to get back forward through strategy also failed.
Need for improvement in the pit stop phase
“I made the call that we go in early and hope that the others fight hard or lose time, if I can do a few good pace laps in the free air,” he took matters into his own hands. But instead, McLaren youngster Ben Dörr also slipped through.
A look at the stopwatch shows that the HRT team still has room for improvement in the pit stops: While the Emil Frey team services their cars in less than seven seconds, Wiebelhaus needed 8.8 and 8.6 seconds.
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However, the youngster still needs to improve the lap out of the pits on cold tires: He lost 0.9 and 0.4 seconds to Maini, and even more than two seconds to the absolute top. “But that’s normal,” team boss Fritz relativizes and points out that in ADAC GT Masters the tires are not changed. “He is doing this for the first time and simply has to learn it with the cold tire.”
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