Maiden win, fourth podium finish from the fourth race and the points’ lead extended: William Tregurtha is the man of the moment in DTM Trophy. At DEKRA Lausitzring, the Brit with the Mercedes-AMG of the CV Performance Group team from Niederzissen secured his maiden win in the junior race series on the DTM platform. In both races at Monza and on Saturday at Lausitz, Tregurtha had already finished on the podium. With the BMW run by FK Performance Motorsport, another Brit, Ben Green, finished in second place. Wolfgang Schrey (BMW, Hofor Racing by Bonk Motorsport) rounded out the podium as the best-placed German. Like on Saturday, Stéphane Kox was the best placed female driver in the field. With the Ring-Racing Toyota, Kox, from The Netherlands, scored her first championship points by finishing eighth. The fifth and sixth races of the season will be held at the Nürburgring, 20-22 August.
“When in university, I shared a room with Ben Green. Now, fighting with him at the race track is fantastic,” William Tregurtha said. “Things can continue like this. Our goal is to score further race wins and to win the championship.”
Reigning champion Tim Heinemann (GER) started the Sunday race from pole position. Behind the PROsport Racing Aston Martin, Austrian Florian Janits (KTM/True Racing by Reiter Engineering) and Michael Schrey followed in second and third. The pole-sitter safely defended first place and led the field into the first corner followed by Janits and Ben Green. Green managed to overtake Janits in the second corner. On the next lap, he used the slipstream to get past Heinemann and take the lead. Still on the same lap, however, Heinemann was able to counter successfully.
On lap four, Janits attacked Ben Green under braking for the second corner. In the process, the Austrian lost control of his KTM and massively collided with Tim Heinemann’s Aston Martin. For Heinemann and Janits, this accident meant the end of their race. The safety car was deployed to allow for the cars to be recovered. At the restart, Green, the winner of the opening race, was the leader from Tregurtha and Schrey.
Saturday race winner Nico Verdonck (BEL) was fourth at the restart with the Ring-Racing Toyota, but then lost two positions to Theo Oeverhaus (GER) with the Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW and Lucas Mauron (SUI) with the Heide-Motorsport Audi. As the race went on, Mauron dropped back further and further behind the first four. The Audi driver had to defend his position against Verdonck and Swiss Yann Zimmer (BMW/FK Performance). Shortly after that, Zimmer collided with Verdonck, for whom the race was over as a result.
The DTM Trophy race, held in front of spectators for the first time again and with numerous entertaining position fiights, had a final highlight in store. In the final corner on lap 15, Tregurtha started a spirited move. Following a wheel-to-wheel duel, the Mercedes-AMG driver moved up into the lead and even though Tregurtha had two wheels off the track on the following lap, his British compatriot didn’t have a chance to overtake him.