Race report
DTM Red Bull Ring
Red Bull Ring DTM: Lawson reignites title challenge with win
Liam Lawson fended off the Mercedes of Maximilian Gotz to secure his second victory of the 2021 DTM season at the Red Bull Ring and thrust himself back into title contention.
Rachit Thukral
Edited: Sep 4, 2021, 4:49 PM
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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 View full results
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