Auer Wins Incident-Scarred Race 1 At Hockenheim

Lucas Auer won a red flag-interrupted Saturday race at Hockenheim in his #22 Winward Mercedes AMG after several significant incidents eliminated multiple cars from the race, and in some cases very likely the event.


Polesetter Auer drove a very strong race to fend off a near race-long challenge from the BMW of Marco Wittmann with Championship leader Sheldon van der Linde charging back from a 16th place start position and passing Wittmann on the final lap for second ,the result leaving the South African still in the lead of the Championship, albeit only by 2 points with just Sunday’s final race remaining.

Van der Linde’s charge up the field was assisted by the elimination of a significant proportion of the grid in multiple accounts.

The race certainly proved the truism that ‘cautions breed cautions with a lap 1 shunt for Arjun Maini bringing out the first Safety Car.

The restart saw multiple further incidents starting with multiple contacts through Turn One, continuing with the GRT Lamborghini of Rolf Ineichen, damaged in the T1 skirmish continuing but losing control and making substantial contact with the Attempto Audi of Marius Zug, both cars going off track at speed and hitting the left hand barriers hard.

And it wasn’t over yet!

Next David Schumacher and Thomas Preining got together and went off harder still into the barriers with confusion behind as a result seeing Ricardo Feller and Dennis Olsen get together in avoidance.

Olsen was turned around and ran fast, out of control into the barriers, the rear of the SSR Porsche taking an exposed barrier end, the impact huge and enough to der the engine straight out of the car, Olsen mercifully walking away from the wreck.

Unsurprisingly the red flag came out for a significant recovery and clear up with just over half the race remaining when proceedings went back to green flag running with the remaining field about to pit.

Auer’s crew managed to get him back on track ahead of his principal competition though Dev Gore led post the mandatory stops.

A mistake from Gore in the Rosberg Audi allowed the leading trio to get by, Gore would come home fourth but with his pit stop under investigation.



DTM – Hockenheim – Race 1 – Result – 2022

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