Not only the ten-second penalty against Lucas Auer, but also that against his compatriot Thomas Preining at the DTM Saturday race in Spielberg was lifted shortly before 6:00 p.m. on Saturday evening. The accusation was an alleged violation of the driving standards in a hot duel with Nico Müller.
Race Direction’s Official Statement: After hearing both drivers and team managers and examining video footage, it was concluded that neither driver was fully responsible for the incident.
Before that, the waves had run high: in the duel of the race, Preining passed Müller three times in turn three, but initially had to give the Rosberg-Audi driver back his position twice before race director Scot Elkins resorted to harsher measures on the third time: Preining had the penalty Cost fifth place in front of Müller – and dropped him back to tenth place.
Preining: “The amount of the penalty is a joke anyway”
Preining in particular was extremely upset about the penalty and wanted to cool down before he turned himself in to the media after the TV interviews. But even three hours after the end of the race, the Bernhard Porsche driver said in an interview with ‘Motorsport-Total.com’: “If there is a penalty for this, the DTM can no longer be helped.”
Preining was able to live with the first decision of the race control when, after a hard maneuver in turn three, he had to let Winward Mercedes driver Lucas Auer, who had exploited the situation, pass by alongside Müller.
“In my opinion, the first maneuver was over the limit. It was fair that I had to give up the position,” says Preining.
“But the second and especially the third maneuver was completely fine. There was enough space for Nico. And many others share this opinion. So I don’t have to blame myself. The amount of the penalty is a joke anyway, we need that don’t talk. And that was the only thing that was really exciting about this race.”
After the race, Preining accused Müller of deliberately opening the steering wheel in a duel on the outside lane and driving off the track next to Preining to challenge a penalty for the Porsche driver.
Preining on “clever” Müller: “Opened the steering”
Because the controversial DTM distance rule introduced at Spa aims primarily to ensure that opponents are not pushed off the track. “He then just opened the steering and drove out anyway because he’s an intelligent guy,” said Preining, who can understand the Swiss’s approach.
“In the end, of course, he gave me very little space. I wouldn’t do much differently in his situation. He certainly drove further out than he had to.”
Müller saw the situation differently – and insisted on compliance with the new rule. “As soon as a car is next to you, you have to leave a car’s width of space so that it doesn’t have to drive off the track,” said the Rosberg-Audi driver, who ended up fifth. “I had to go off the track three times, after a pretty heavy contact. My car is there, you can look at it. Everything on the right is shattered.”
Müller: “It’s not right that he gets away scot-free”
Contact is fine, “but the car has to be able to stay next to me on the track. And I was his brake pad twice, and the third time he just let me starve on the outside.”
Müller himself was not aware of any guilt. “Whenever I saw that he still made a divebomb, I always gave space and didn’t just give in,” says Müller. “He just has to brake that three meters earlier on Turn 3.”
What does the Rosberg-Audi driver, who did not finish fourth but sixth due to the cancellation of the penalties against Auer and Preining, think of the final decision of the race control? “I think the race director did the right thing by giving him a time penalty,” Müller said.
“Maybe the ten seconds were too hard, but they should have ordered a change of position. I don’t think it’s right that he gets away completely scot-free.” Incidentally, the cancellation of the penalty also has consequences in the championship: Preining is fifth, 39 points behind DTM leader Sheldon van der Linde, Müller has four points fewer and falls back to seventh place.