Having put his Red Bull AF Corse Ferrari on pole, Liam Lawson crossed the line third in the latest DTM Series race at Assen in the Netherlands which has moved him into the overall lead in the points standings. Marco Wittmann came out on top with his Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW in spite of having incurred a five-second time penalty for contact with Lawson.
Guest driver Mirko Bortolotti (ITA) finished second ahead of the Kiwi with Maximilian Götz (Mercedes-AMG) and Christian Klien (AUT) (McLaren) in fourth and fifth place. As guests cannot score championship points, Lawson gained 18-points for crossing the finish line as the second series driver.
“It was a pretty crazy race trying not to end up in a crash,” commented Lawson. “I realised that Kelvin (van der Linde) got pretty unlucky with the safety car and obvious it ruined their strategy. This put us in a good position with Max (Gotz) behind me. Marco (Wittman) did a great job to win, I didn’t want to put us in a risky position with crashing so it is what it is. Some really good points from today.”
Having come to Assen as the leader in the drivers’ standings, Kelvin van der Linde, who didn’t take his compulsory pitstop for tyres early, got caught out by a safety car period which reduced his 27-second lead on the rest of the field. He led the field until the penultimate lap before heading into the pits, dropping back to twelfth. As a result, the South African lost his points’ lead to Lawson and is now in joint second place together with Wittmann.
Drivers will face a qualifying session (7:55pm NZ time) for the second race (11:15pm NZ time) at Assen on Sunday. Both races live on the DTM YouTube channel.
Overall Points
1/ Liam Lawson 156
2/ Kelvin van der Linde 148
3/ Marco Wittman 148
4/ Maximilian Gotz 147
5/ Philip Ellis 109
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