Nico Müller has closed the appointment of the DTM in Portimao with victory after winning the race on Sunday. The Team Rosberg rider did not have the best start to the season in Saturday’s heat, but he turned the weekend around with a brilliant victory. Felipe Fraga has been second and debuts his record in the DTM at the hands of Ferrari and AF Corse while Mirko Bortolotti has repeated the third place harvested in Saturday’s race and leaves the Portuguese track as the first leader of the contest.
The race started with a Nico Müller’s pristine start and with a touch in the final part of the peloton in which several drivers were involved, including Nicki Thiim and Luca Stolz. Having overcome the initial chaos, Felipe Fraga sa Mirko Bortolotti in the tenth corner as a preview of a series of overtaking, most of them concentrated in the central part of the group. Hand in hand with these movements, the first pit stops for Felipe Fraga, Lucas Auer and Kelvin Van der Linde. in head, Nico Müller achieved 3.5 seconds of rent on Mirko Bortolotti.
Nico Müller’s pit stop put Mirko Bortolotti as provisional leader, but without the pace he showed on Saturday, the Italian was overtaken by Felipe Fraga to take virtual second position once all the leading drivers made their mandatory stop. David Schumacher was then left as the leader of the test ahead of Sébastien Loeb, Mikaël Grenier, Alessio Deledda and Esmee Hawkey, all of them without stopping. With everything, Müller was not long in arriving behind the backs of these improvised protagonists. In fact, the Swiss looked hampered and Felipe Fraga was gaining ground.
Nico Müller finished by recovering the lead once all the riders who were still ahead made their stop, being the last Mikaël Grenier when they had completed 24 laps of the race. The final stretch of the test did not have much crumb in the top positions and Nico Müller achieved a more or less comfortable victory with a lead of 3.4 seconds with Felipe Fraga. For his part, Mirko Bortolotti took third position to become the first leader of the DTM, while Marco Wittmann crossed the finish line in fourth place after a discreet but effective race.
the reigning champion Maximilian Götz took a valuable fifth place which makes him leave with some hope for a Sunday that has not been especially favorable for the interests of the drivers and teams under the Mercedes-AMG umbrella. In fact, Götz has been the only one of the representatives of the Stuttgart firm within the ‘top5’ in a race in which Kelvin van der Linde was sixth in his Audi, with Laurens Vanthoor separating the South African brothers by taking seventh place ahead of Sheldon Van der Linde. Ricardo Feller and Maro Engel have completed the top ten positions.
Far from this ‘top 10’ has finished Sébastien Loeb in a race against the French star. Lacking pace, the nine-time WRC champion has sought a very aggressive strategy, stretching his first stint to the maximum in search of a Safety Car that has never arrived. As a result of this bet, Loeb was 18th, just behind Maximilian Buhk. Things haven’t gone much better for David Schumacher with identical strategy and a touch when leaving the pits with Buhk himself. The young German driver finished 15th.
Results race 2 of the DTM 2022 in Portimao
Photos: DTM