DTM Spa: Olsen beats Gotz to first victory through showers

Olsen made a clean start from pole position in his SSR Performance Porsche to lead the field after lap 1, while Winward Mercedes driver Auer got the jump on Thomas Preining's Bernhard Porsche on the run up to Raidillon.

Auer maintained the pressure on Olsen for the entire first stint, keeping the gap under a second with a series of fastest laps. The Austrian then rolled the dice by pitting early on lap eight for his mandatory stop, but the attempted undercut backfired when a fumbled tyre change cost him at least three seconds.

This meant that Olsen could come into the pits the following lap and still come out in the net lead, while Auer was forced to repass both Laurens Vanthoor and Maximilian Gotz when they made their respective stops later in the race.

Olsen was well clear of Auer when the Mercedes suffered a sudden puncture exiting Eau Rouge, forcing him to retire.

After Auer’s exit it was his Winward team-mate Gotz who emerged as Olsen’s closest challenger. The defending champion managed to close within a second of the Norwegian with four laps to go, as a sudden bout of rain in the first sector threw a spanner in the works.

But the rain subsided quickly and Olsen was able to hang on to the top spot by just 0.818s, clinching Porsche’s second-ever victory in the DTM following Preining’s triumph at the Norisring in July.

Second nevertheless marked a first podium finish of the season for Gotz, whose previous best-result of 2022 was a fourth at the Nurburgring.

Race winner Dennis Olsen, SSR Performance Porsche 911 GT3-R (Photo by: Alexander Trienitz)

Preining made it two Porsches on the rostrum after successfully recovering from a major tank slapper at Raidillon on the opening lap that initially dropped him to ninth.

Three-time DTM champion Rene Rast made a sluggish start from ninth on the grid and fell to 10th place, but recovered lost ground by going long in the first stint, climbing up to fourth at the finish.

Rast’s Abt Audi team-mate Kelvin van der Linde finished a strong fifth, while Team Rosberg’s Nico Muller made it three cars from the Ingolstadt-based marque inside the top six.

Red Bull driver Felipe Fraga was classified seventh in the lead AF Corse Ferrari, while Grasser Lamborghini’s Mirko Bortolotti charged from 20th on the grid to finish eighth, making most of his moves in tricky conditions in the final laps of the race.

Walkenhorst BMW’s Marco Wittmann followed Bortolotti after his own poor qualifying, moving up to ninth on the final lap after overtaking Fraga's team-mate Nick Cassidy and David Schumacher in the third Winward Mercedes.

Cassidy eventually picked up the final point in 10th, while Schumacher just held off championship leader Sheldon van der Linde - who had qualified down in 22nd - for 11th at the flag.

With just five races to go, Schubert BMW driver van der Linde continues to lead the championship on 110 points, with Rast now level with Bortolotti on 93 points.

Auer would have moved up to 103 points had he not retired from the race while running in second.

DTM Spa Race 1 Results (23 laps)

Cla	Driver	Car	Time	Gap
1	Dennis Olsen	Porsche 911 GT3 R	54'34.994
2	Maximilian Götz	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	54'35.812	0.818
3	Thomas Preining	Porsche 911 GT3 R	54'41.966	6.972
4	René Rast	Audi R8 LMS Evo II	54'51.121	16.127
5	Kelvin van der Linde	Audi R8 LMS Evo II	54'55.766	20.772
6	Nico Müller	Audi R8 LMS Evo II	54'56.096	21.102
7	Felipe Fraga	Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020	54'57.498	22.504
8	Mirko Bortolotti	Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo	55'02.630	27.636
9	Marco Wittmann	BMW M4 GT3	55'04.313	29.319
10	Nick Cassidy	Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020	55'04.990	29.996
11	David Schumacher	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	55'06.110	31.116
12	Sheldon Van Der Linde	BMW M4 GT3	55'06.168	31.174
13	Esteban Muth	BMW M4 GT3	55'06.414	31.420
14	Arjun Maini	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	55'06.660	31.666
15	Luca Stolz	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	55'07.534	32.540
16	Maximilian Buhk	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	55'07.811	32.817
17	Marius Zug	Audi R8 LMS Evo II	55'10.690	35.696
18	Ricardo Feller	Audi R8 LMS Evo II	55'10.797	35.803
19	Rolf Ineichen	Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo	55'34.310	59.316
20	Alessio Deledda	Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo	56'03.287	1'28.293
21	Dev Gore	Audi R8 LMS Evo II	56'42.877	2'07.883
22	Clemens Schmid	Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo	53'48.738	1 Lap
	Mikael Grenier	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	38'05.256	7 Laps
	Lucas Auer	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	40'03.143	7 Laps
	Maro Engel	Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo	35'43.859	9 Laps
	Laurens Vanthoor	Porsche 911 GT3 R	31'19.378	10 Laps
	Philipp Eng	BMW M4 GT3	17'25.188	16 Laps
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