Red Bull Ring DTM: Lawson reignites title challenge with win

Lawson had slipped to fifth in the standings after three non-scores in the previous two rounds, but he bounced back strongly on Red Bull’s home turf to become only the second repeat winner of the year.

The 19-year-old made a clean start from pole position to lead into Turn 1 from Gotz, and was a second up on his rival by the end of Lap 2.

Gotz was the first of the leading duo to pit on lap 7, with the HRT team servicing his AMG GT3 in less than six seconds in their bid to undercut Lawson.

But the 2.5-second buffer the AF Corse driver had built in his Ferrari was enough to hold onto the net lead, with Lawson emerging in front of Gotz after making his own pitstop a lap later.

Gotz rapidly closed in on Lawson in the final stages of the race as both finally cleared the late-stopping Audis of Nico Muller and Mike Rockenfeller, but he was never in a position to make a pass on the Kiwi.

Lawson eventually crossed the line just over a second clear of Gotz to score his first DTM victory since the season opener at Monza, moving himself to third in the championship behind Kelvin van der Linde and Gotz.

While Lawson appeared to be in control up front, the battle for the final podium position went down the wire, with Philip Ellis narrowly holding into third from Alex Albon and Kelvin van der Linde.

Having charged his way from eighth on the grid after two long battles with van der Linde and Arjun Maini, Nurburgring Race 2 winner Albon was right on the tail of Ellis despite carrying 25kg of success ballast on his Ferrari.

Albon tried to make a bold move on Ellis’ Winward Mercedes on the outside of Turn 6 but ran slightly wide, making light contact with van der Linde as the Abt Sportsline Audi driver tried to take advantage of the battle ahead of him.

This allowed Ellis the breathing space to clinch his third rostrum finish of the season, as Albon and van der Linde finished close behind him in fourth and fifth respectively.

Coming into the weekend championship leader van der Linde had warned that the Austrian venue wouldn’t suit the Audi R8 LMS, but a top-five result helped him limit the damage to his lead over nearest rivals Gotz and Lawson.

GetSpeed’s Maini secured his best finish of the rookie DTM season in sixth, beating the top BMW of Walkenhorst driver Marco Wittmann.

Home hero Lucas Auer was eighth in the Winward Mercedes, while the top 10 was rounded out by HRT’s Vincent Abril and Rowe Racing BMW driver Timo Glock - the latter securing only his second points finish of 2021 after a nightmare start to the season.

Glock’s teammate Sheldon van der Linde was in contention for a decent haul of points when he ran straight at Turn 4 with what appeared to be a technical problem, parking his car at the exit of the corner.

Race results:

Cla	Driver	Car	Time	Gap
1	Liam Lawson	Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020	57'48.232
2	Maximilian Götz	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	57'49.239	1.007
3	Philip Ellis	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	58'01.171	12.939
4	Alex Albon	Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020	58'02.514	14.282
5	Kelvin van der Linde	Audi R8 LMS Evo	58'03.061	14.829
6	Arjun Maini	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	58'03.428	15.196
7	Marco Wittmann	BMW M6 GT3	58'03.775	15.543
8	Lucas Auer	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	58'05.239	17.007
9	Vincent Abril	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	58'07.976	19.744
10	Timo Glock	BMW M6 GT3	58'10.392	22.160
11	Daniel Juncadella	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	58'11.436	23.204
12	Maximilian Buhk	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	58'13.832	25.600
13	Paul Maximilian	Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo	58'17.690	29.458
14	Esteban Muth	BMW M6 GT3	58'18.217	29.985
15	Mike Rockenfeller	Audi R8 LMS Evo	58'26.407	38.175
16	Esmee Hawkey	Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo	58'27.644	39.412
17	Sophia Flörsch	Audi R8 LMS Evo	58'55.400	1'07.168
18	Nico Müller	Audi R8 LMS Evo	47'15.671	7 Laps
19	Dev Gore	Audi R8 LMS Evo	24'17.109	23 Laps
20	Sheldon Van Der Linde	BMW M6 GT3	14'15.922	29 Laps
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