The Brazilian Felipe Fraga already knows what it is to win in the DTM. The Red Bull and AF Corse driver asserted his pole position to claim victory in Sunday’s race at the Norisring in his Ferrari 488 GT3. Despite having very strong rivals behind him, the Brazilian managed the race times to perfection. Second has been Mirko Bortolotti, a result that allows him to be placed at the head of the DTM classification. For his part, René Rast finished in third position.
Felipe Fraga managed to position himself inside the first corner to maintain the first position ahead of Mirko Bortolotti and Marco Wittmann. Unlike Saturday the first turn was uneventful, which allowed René Rast to place fourth. He was also making up ground on Dennis Olsen after moving up to fifth a lap later, ahead of reigning DTM champion Maximilian Götz. As opposed, Thomas Preining fell several positions and was placed seventh. After the first five laps, the race stabilized, although behind David Schumacher with problems he had to pit.
Mikaël Grenier, David Schumahcer himself and Ricardo Feller, the latter two involved in a touch, were the first dropouts in a race that consumed the minutes before the opening of the pit stop window without any shocks. The duel between Ayhancan Güven and Thomas Preining for seventh placewith the victory of the Turkish pilot, livened up the minutes before the real start of stops. Luca Stolz and Lucas Auer were the first to pass through the piltane. Laurens Vanthoor was also following in the footsteps of the two Mercedes-AMG drivers.
In the leading group, Thomas Preining, Philipp Eng and Arjun Maini pitted on lap 32. Maximilian Götz and Arjun Maini followed suit one lap later, finishing off the domino effect needed to see Dennis Olsen and Ayhancan Güven save. However, Maximilian Götz slipped between the two drivers. We still had to wait until turn 45 to see René Rast’s stop. The German Marco Wittmann followed in his footsteps, also forcing Mirko Bortolotti and leader Felipe Fraga to stop. In the process, Rast beat Wittmann to third place.
Sheldon Van der Linde was the last pilot to make his stopwhich left Felipe Fraga in front of the race with a lead of 4.4 seconds over Mirko Bortolotti and 5.8 seconds over René Rast, with Marco Wittmann fourth and Dennis Olsen fifth, all with fifteen minutes of racing to play. Nevertheless, the head positions were really defined after the stopsso Felipe Fraga enjoyed a very solid lead over Mirko Bortolotti, even if the Lamborghini driver did set the fastest lap.
There was no room for more changes and Felipe Fraga scored the victory with the AF Corse Ferrari 488 GT3, earning his first victory in the DTM. Mirko Bortolotti crossed the finish line in second place to become the new leader of the championship. René Rast closed the podium ahead of Marco Wittmann and Dennis Olsen. The current champion Maximilian Götz closed his performance in sixth place, while the Turkish Ayhancan Güven took seventh place after beating Luca Stolz, Thomas Preining and Maro Engel.
2022 DTM race 2 results at Norisring
Photos: DTM