– Does the bitter penalty for Maro Engel after the collision with Kelvin van der Linde cost him the DTM title? The Winward-Mercedes driver, who started from pole position on Sunday at the Sachsenring, was in sixth place at the restart a few laps before the end, while DTM leader Thomas Preining was second.
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When braking for the first corner, he touched the rear of Kelvin van der Linde’s BMW with his left front and pushed him into the gravel trap. Engel finished fifth but was classified only 17th due to the 15-second penalty (race report). As a result, he loses all eleven points – and is 23 points behind Preining in the overall standings before the finale in Hockenheim.
“Certainly not a happy situation,” Engel says about the incident with van der Linde. “Of course, we had to attack, were in a difficult position – and unfortunately, it went wrong.” Overall, it was “not a particularly good race from our side – from my side.”
“Simply too many mistakes made today. Whether it was strategy or my side on the track,” Engel expresses dissatisfaction with himself and his Winward team.
15-second penalty: Why the stewards had no choice
The stewards had no choice in their judgment: Engel immediately took full responsibility during the hearing. Due to the late braking maneuver, the ABS intervened – after that, he was just a passenger. Fifteen seconds is the usual penalty in this regard.
This corresponds to three penalty laps of five seconds each. Because of the action, Engel ended van der Linde’s race prematurely. Apart from that: If Engel had only received a five-second penalty, he would also have been 17th because the field was still so compact after the restart.
How does Mercedes-AMG view the accident? “Maro had good tires and knew he had to attack with them. And the previous safety car phase lasted a long time. Then time runs out – and then he just wanted a little bit too much,” says Thomas Jäger, who acts as the sporting director of the DTM division at Mercedes-AMG.
Did the strategy put Engel in the difficult position in the first place?
“It is known that there are three penalty laps if you take a competitor out of the race and they can no longer continue,” he has no objections to the penalty.
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But what does Engel mean by the strategic mistake? “In hindsight, it was probably the wrong decision to start with the used slicks. We made ourselves vulnerable at the beginning,” says the Winward-Mercedes driver, who already slipped on the wet track during the warm-up lap and then had no chance against the eventual winner Ben Dörr, who started on new slicks.
Engel in the Porsche trap: “Got hit very hard a couple of times”
Then Engel also rubbed against Preining’s Porsche brand colleague Bastian Buus, who fell back on rain tires and cost him about five seconds, and Ricardo Feller.
“I certainly got hit very hard a couple of times,” says Engel. “But if you are at the top in the championship, you have to expect that you will be hit hard at the end by the teammates of the other contenders.”
Only then was Preining, who was in seventh place after the first lap, able to overtake Engel on the track – and Kelvin van der Linde and Luca Engster also took advantage of the opportunity.
Should Engel have stopped earlier?
“Actually, he only found the pace again after the respective pit stops. And unfortunately, that was the reason he was passed so far,” explains Jäger. Because the pit stop also offered the opportunity to adjust the tire pressure again.
The fact that Engel only stopped in the twelfth lap, although the first pit stop window allowed tire changes from the fifth lap, was also not optimal. According to information from Motorsport-Total.com, there were also discussions on the radio about this.
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This fits Engel’s statement that his ‘communication with the team’ regarding strategy was not optimal either. “In hindsight, you are always smarter, but if you don’t have the pace, you could certainly have stopped earlier,” Jäger also says.
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