– Exciting starting position at the start of the second half of the DTM season in Oschersleben: Thomas Preining, who had threatened to retire after the difficult Norisring weekend, secured pole position in Saturday’s qualifying with a 1:21.862 (qualifying result). Porsche strikes back!
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“Things can change so quickly,” Preining says happily to ran.de about his first season pole on his favorite track. “This is also an absolute Porsche track; we’ve always been quite fast here. And I’m just happy that things are looking better for us again, that we’re back up front where we belong.”
How much did the great disappointment at Norisring affect him, when the Porsche was not competitive and he settled accounts with the Balance of Performance (BoP) in the DTM? “It didn’t really work on me – in the end, I got over it relatively quickly because the whole thing at Norisring was already very extreme,” he says.
Lamborghini and AMG in pursuit
“But in the end, in motorsport, and especially in DTM, things often go quickly from the very back to the very front – and just as quickly, they can go back again.” In second place, Abt-Lamborghini driver Luca Engstler (+0.070) surprised, lining up ahead of Mercedes-AMG drivers Maro Engel (+0.113) and Lucas Auer (+0.137) in third and fourth place.
“It feels great,” Engstler says happily to ran.de, in light of the problems with the Lamborghini Temerario GT3, about the “top lap” and the new car’s best qualifying result to date. “It’s been a mixed year, of course; we have a lot of work ahead of us with the new car, but it’s nice that we can keep setting highlights.”
Chaser Engel catches up to Thiim in championship
And Engel, who as third-place finisher has reduced his gap to leader Nicki Thiim in the overall standings by one point to eight points, is also satisfied with the result. “We maximized the package today,” says the Winward-Mercedes driver to ran.de. “So far this weekend, Thomas and especially the Porsche have been dominant. So we are happy that the gap is relatively small.”
Photos: DTM 2026: Race weekend Oschersleben, Saturday
Speaking of Porsche: Preining’s teammate Ricardo Feller finished eleventh with a 0.424-second deficit, while Bastian Buus, who is struggling in the Land-Porsche in Oschersleben and lost 0.568 seconds, finished 14th.
Big anger for Thiim: “Maybe I should quit too”
While the drivers of the brand with the star, who are in pursuit in the championship, put themselves in a good starting position, everything went wrong for DTM leader Nicki Thiim. The Comtoyou-Aston-Martin driver only managed 18th place and was 0.803 seconds behind.
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“Didn’t get any superpowers,” the Dane complains to ran.de about the BoP – and the statements from Preining and Schubert-BMW driver Marco Wittmann after the Norisring race.
He “had fun” “reading all the articles with Mr. Wittmann and Preining – we’re quitting and so on. Yes, maybe I should do that too – quit. Then maybe I’ll get 50 kilos out of here and more power.”
Thiim is annoyed that he was penalized on a track “where you simply need big balls.” He says it’s not his “problem that the guys can’t get around there and then a conclusion is drawn from that, completely slowing us down… Now I’m the one suffering. Now I’m standing here and saying I’m quitting.”
BMW and Ferrari in the midfield
BMW drivers Marco Wittmann (+0.542) and Kelvin van der Linde (+0.621) also did not finish in the front at Schubert’s home race, taking 13th and 15th place.
And how did the Emil Frey team fare, whose technical director Jürg Flach had already complained before the weekend about the classification in Oschersleben? Matteo Cairoli, who is the first pursuer of the leading trio Thiim, Engel, and Auer in the championship, finished in eighth place with a 0.355-second deficit.
Flach had stated that internal calculations showed a 0.3-second deficit compared to the previous year. Cairoli’s teammate Thierry Vermeulen (+0.671) did not get beyond 16th place.
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The Saturday race will start as usual at 1:30 PM (all info on TV times, stream, etc.) and will only feature one mandatory pit stop. It remains to be seen whether Thiim can work his way to the front on the track where overtaking is difficult.
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