From the beer-fueled bonfires at the 24 Hours of Daytona to the risk of hypothermia near Pikes Peak’s 14,115-foot-high finish line, I love racing. I’ve found that the line for hot dogs at local ovals like Whittemore Speedway can feel just as exciting as the dramatic opening notes of Also sprach Zarathustra at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It doesn’t matter what you’re hungry for, racing is great anywhere.
Competition has a way of equalizing the thrill of spectating at events big and small. Maybe it’s because motorsports are fundamentally violent that this influences it. In NASCAR, for example, nearly 40 cars circling Bristol Motor Speedway emit enough thunder to create a wake in the grandstand’s urinals. You don’t witness such wonders at the opera.
So there I was this past weekend, on assignment with Manthey Racing, standing among their green and yellow Grello crew during the most important race weekend of their season.
The entire Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) championship would be decided by two races at the Hockenheimring. With the bright marquee of the crêpe-slinging food truck behind me, the energy felt different from any sports car race I’d attended before. What I was about to experience would be the craziest moments of a 24-hour endurance event, jammed into a 55-minute sprint race.
Manthey Racing’s Thomas “Tommy” Preining and his Porsche 911 GT3 R entered the weekend narrowly ahead of Maro Engel’s Mercedes-AMG GT3 in points. In third place was Marco Wittmann’s BMW M4 GT3 EVO. One point separated Engel and Wittmann. Germany’s big three—Porsche, Mercedes, and BMW—were about to duke it out.
Here’s how it went.
Into Turn 1, it became abundantly clear that the little “click” inside every racing driver’s brain—the one that switches off the self-preservation instincts detrimental to lap time—thumps like a drum in DTM. The series doesn’t allow tire warmers, so the beginning of a DTM race tends to resemble a plate of scrambled pancakes. It stays that way even after the tires gather heat.
Manthey’s No. 90 Porsche didn’t keep its front bumper beyond Turn 2.
Kaiserschmarrn
Just ahead, the Red Bull Ferrari got into Preining, sending the championship leader off track and dropping him from third to 13th. At the very next corner, a car spins, more GT3 cars trade paint, and teams and race control immediately jump to the replay looking for someone to blame.
The gasps and sighs from the grandstands are right out of a sitcom. The fans react as one blob of emotion, but from within the garages, agony and celebration with every spin jump out of each team’s area separately. Some teams are heard cheering while their rivals crash out. I begin to conclude American race fans would absolutely adore this series.
The entire field swims around the stranded car like a school of fish around a diver. Other cars jump at the opportunity to gain track position and points from the poor bastard. At the back of the pack, amid a tornado of dirt and carbon-fiber body debris, Timo Glock, driver of the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, masterfully avoids a Lamborghini’s broadside, but gets boinked into a 360-degree spin in the middle of the track. He drives out of it without lifting a middle finger.
That was lap one.
On the very next lap, pole sitter Luca Engstler was still leading in his Red Bull Lamborghini when Lucas Auer’s AMG attacked at the hairpin. Contact was made. Then more. Then again. Then a little more over the curbing at corner exit. The inevitable happened.
Engstler’s Lamborghini met concrete, ending the pole sitter’s afternoon and bringing out the red flag.
We weren’t even three laps into the race yet.
You Break, I Fix
In DTM, tattered race cars are allowed to be repaired during a red flag while they lie unpowered at the grid, but some wounds are too deep to be fixed with aluminum tape. A group of mechanics from the No. 90 Manthey Racing team bring a replacement nose but are told by race control, “Fix it with zip ties instead”—a decision likely inspired by an American health insurance company. A stream of what appeared to be coolant begins to form in the asphalt under one of the Lamborghinis.
During the pause, race officials decided it would be good to have at least three more laps of this behavior, to make up for the time it took to replace the concrete barrier that was struck earlier. It’s at this point I nudge one of the crew members to ask, “So, is it always this violent?” He looks annoyed by this likely foolish inquiry and responds: “No. This is pretty tame. This is DTM.”
When the green flag drops, the driving immediately grows just as aggressive as when it had stopped. Preining begins his march back to the front of the field. He’s got the entire season to lose, which forces him to take every opportunity he can get.
When the pit window opens, which allows teams to stop for their required pit stop during green flag racing, a 911 dressed like a New England Patriots running back growls down pit lane. Now I understand that there’s no better place to advertise the upcoming Patriots versus Detroit Lions football game hosted in Munich, later in November. Go Lions, obviously.
It’s during these pit stops, the Comtoyou Racing crew changes four tires on their Aston Martin Vantage GT3 in 5.510 seconds, an achievement that also awards teams points. The crew celebrates with the nastiest handshake I’ve ever witnessed in motorsports.
More Bumping, More Banging
Of course, as cars exit pit lane on cold tires, their attempts to assimilate with cars on the racing line fail. The bright yellow snake-liveried “Mamba” AMG GT3 collides with a McLaren. Its venomous bite stings the No. 16 McLaren hard, sending it spinning for the second time in 27 minutes of racing.
Raindrops begin to appear on the broadcast camera as the leader, Maro Engel, enters pit lane. During their tire change, they encounter a devastating problem getting the passenger rear wheel on. Their pit stop would take 16 seconds, which, we were told by a crew member, actually saved them from a penalty. I love this sport.
Preining, risking it all after the first-lap incident, had clawed his way from 13th back up to fifth, with just 18 minutes left in the race. The raindrops on the broadcast camera thicken, but there’s little movement in the garage near the stacks of Pirelli rain tires.
With three minutes left, I’ve needed to use the bathroom for over an hour, and I can’t bring myself to walk away now. Championship contenders Wittmann and Engel enter a battle. There is little that differentiates the way they are driving from how people in Tampa Bay, Florida, road-rage on Interstate 4.
A bump sends Engel’s cheetah-themed AMG ahead of Wittmann’s BMW. That’s how it would’ve ended under regulation, but the extended race keeps the action going for three bonus laps. Race control makes Engel return the position to Wittmann, and that’s how it would end, with Lucas Auer, who was involved in the incident affecting the pole sitter at the race’s dramatic beginning, at the top of the podium.
Finally, I’m able to use the restroom. What a race. And going into the next, the gap in points among the top three had only shrunk. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stick around for Sunday’s race, but I was excited to learn of Preining’s third-place finish during race two, which won him the championship. After watching how hard he fought to earn back almost every spot he lost in the first lap of race one, it was obvious no bump or shunt would prevent him from becoming champion.
The Real Winners
At its heart, sports car racing is fast. It’s also violent. There are many stories to tell, but it’s largely tales of heartbreak and “almost.” That’s been true for DTM since its primordial race in 1984.
What makes this type of racing particularly great is cars can make contact at more than 130 mph, and they just keep going. People spin out. They just keep going. Something terrible happens in the pit. The team rallies and the fight continues. It’s beautiful.
Obviously, there can only be one champion. But race number two and the DTM’s 2026 season ended with four cars doing burnouts. I absolutely love how ruthless the battles are, only to end in shared celebration.
The series picks back up next year in late April at Austria’s Red Bull Ring. I’ll be watching.
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Austin Irwin has worked for Car and Driver for over 10 years in various roles. He’s steadily worked his way from an entry-level data entry position into driving vehicles for photography and video, and is now reviewing and testing cars. What will he do next? Who knows, but he better be fast.
Source: www.caranddriver.com
