Preining didn’t put a foot wrong all day, claiming pole position in his Manthey EMA Porsche before leading every lap outside of the pitstop cycle to bag a maximum haul of 28 points.
For a long time it appeared that the Austrian would be able to wrap up the title as his nearest rival Mirko Bortolotti sat down in seventh, but the Lamborghini racer was able to clear the Audi of Kelvin van der Linde with just over 10 minutes left on the clock to take the fight to the final race of the season on Sunday.
Preining will go into the finale with a 27-point lead in the standings, which means he could wrap up the title as early as qualifying if his Italian rival fails to get the bonus points for pole or second on the grid.
At the start of the race, Preining made a clean start from pole position to hold the lead into Turn 1, with team-mate Dennis Olsen jumping the Grasser Lamborghini of DTM returnee Christian Engelhart to establish a Manthey EMA 1-2.
Preining slowly and steadily built a lead of over a second in the first stint of the race, with Olsen acting as a rear-gunner and keeping Engelhart at bay.
With Preining unthreatened at the front, the attention turned towards Bortolotti, who needed to finish inside the top six in order to stay in the title hunt.
Having lost a lap that would have been good enough for pole in qualifying to track limits, the SSR Performance driver started the race from eighth and was unable to make much headways in the first stint of the race, running seventh behind the Abt Audis of Ricardo Feller - the last remaining runner in the title fight - and van der Linde.
When the pit window open at the 20-minute mark, Emil Frey's Jack Aitken and Feller were the first among the leading group to stop for fresh tyres, with van der Linde and Bortolotti following in the next lap.
A quicker stop allowed Bortolotti to jump van der Linde and he even managed to leapfrog Aitken and Feller with the overcut, only for the trio to pass him on track as he struggled on old tyres.
With the status quo reinstated and Preining cruising out front, it appeared Bortolotti would miss out on a title fight for a second season running.
However, Bortolotti kept the pressure up on van der Linde and, after a titanic battle between the two, he finally made a move on the South African into Turn 7.
A few laps later, Bortolotti also found a way past the Ferrari of recently-crowned IMSA enduro champion Aitken, taking an extra point for fifth place and keeping himself in the title hunt.
At the front, Preining romped to an easy one-second victory to boost his chances of becoming DTM’s first champion under the aegis of the ADAC, with Olsen finishing second to help Manthey EMA seal the teams’ title.
Third place went to Engelhart, who managed to secure a podium on his return to DTM with Grasser after splitting with Toksport WRT halfway through the season.
Fourth place went to Feller, who enjoyed a brilliant scrap with Aitken on both sides of the pitstop, but the result wasn’t enough to keep him in the title fight.
Van der Linde took sixth at the finish behind Bortolotti, after overtaking Aitken in the closing stages of the race.
HRT’s Luca Stolz was the only driver to score points for Mercedes in eighth, with Project 1 BMW’s’s Marco Wittmann and Team Bernhard Porsche’s Laurin Heinrich completing the top 10.
Outgoing DTM champion Sheldon van der Linde scored a solitary point in 15th, while his Schubert BMW team-mate Rene Rast retired after picking up a puncture in an incident with HRT Mercedes rival Arjun Maini.
Race results:
| Cla | Nº | Driver | Car / Engine | Laps | Delay/Retirement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 91 | Thomas Preining | Porsche | 37 | |
| 2 | 90 | Dennis Olsen | Porsche | 37 | 0.624 |
| 3 | 19 | C.Engelhart | Lamborghini | 37 | 3.203 |
| 4 | 7 | Ricardo Feller | Audi | 37 | 12.923 |
| 5 | 92 | Mirko Bortolotti | Lamborghini | 37 | 13.165 |
| 6 | 3 | K.van der Linde | Audi | 37 | 16.297 |
| 7 | 14 | Jack Aitken | Ferrari | 37 | 17.938 |
| 8 | 4 | Luca Stolz | Mercedes | 37 | 18.811 |
| 9 | 11 | Marco Wittmann | BMW | 37 | 22.606 |
| 10 | 75 | Laurin Heinrich | Porsche | 37 | 23.624 |
| 11 | 69 | T.Vermeulen | Ferrari | 37 | 24.305 |
| 12 | 63 | Clemens Schmid | Lamborghini | 37 | 26.188 |
| 13 | 99 | Marvin Dienst | Porsche | 37 | 27.559 |
| 14 | 94 | Franck Perera | Lamborghini | 37 | 28.114 |
| 15 | 1 | S.van der Linde | BMW | 37 | 29.158 |
| 16 | 22 | Lucas Auer | Mercedes | 37 | 31.200 |
| 17 | 40 | Mattia Drudi | Audi | 37 | 31.877 |
| 18 | 48 | Maro Engel | Mercedes | 37 | 32.307 |
| 19 | 27 | David Schumacher | Mercedes | 37 | 32.718 |
| 20 | 83 | P.Niederhauser | Audi | 37 | 39.091 |
| 21 | 56 | Sandro Holzem | BMW | 37 | 55.717 |
| 22 | 84 | Jusuf Owega | Mercedes | 37 | 56.179 |
| (23) | 36 | Arjun Maini | Mercedes | 27 | Retirement |
| (24) | 33 | René Rast | BMW | 21 | Retirement |
| (16) | 6 | Alessio Deledda | Lamborghini | 17 | Retirement |
| (26) | 8 | Luca Engstler | Audi | 15 | Retirement |
| (15) | 9 | Tim Heinemann | Porsche | 14 | Retirement |
| (28) | 24 | Ayhancan Guven | Porsche | 14 | Retirement |
