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.
