{"id":4072,"date":"2022-05-24T01:22:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T01:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/?p=4072"},"modified":"2022-05-05T12:23:42","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T12:23:42","slug":"solid-but-not-perfect-dtm-season-opener-for-abt-sportsline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/?p=4072","title":{"rendered":"Solid but not perfect DTM season opener for ABT Sportsline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The start of the new DTM season has confirmed one fact above all: The record grid of 29 GT cars from six different brands has not only quantity to offer but also quality. On the demanding racetrack of Portim\u00e3o in the south of Portugal, the fastest 24 drivers were covered by a single second on both days in qualifying. Just one tenth of a second made a huge difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Portimao: DTM race at Portimao 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Team ABT Sportsline managed to score points with two cars in both races and left the Algarve in second place in the DTM Teams\u2019 Championship. In the drivers\u2019 standings, Kelvin van der Linde is fifth with 20 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team from the Allg\u00e4u region struggled at Portim\u00e3o mainly in qualifying. Kelvin van der Linde got stuck in the heavy traffic on Saturday and also caught a flat spot. The result: grid position 17, the worst of his DTM career. \u201cNever give up!\u201d was the South African\u2019s motto afterwards with an impressive race performance. Van der Linde fought his way up to fourth putting a smile back on his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Qualifying on Sunday went better for him with eighth place, but all three ABT drivers lost some time on their qualifying laps mainly in the last corner. Van der Linde made the best of it in Sunday\u2019s race as well collecting eight more valuable points finishing sixth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ricardo Feller made a remarkable debut in the DTM and within Team ABT Sportsline: The young Swiss was involved in the leading group right from the start and scored points in both races in 6th and 9th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ren\u00e9 Rast\u2019s weekend showed that this is anything but granted in the 2022 DTM. After a contact with the Mercedes of defending champion Maximilian G\u00f6tz, the steering wheel of his ABT Audi R8 LMS GT3 evo II was askew. In addition, a rim was damaged. Nevertheless, the three-time DTM champion had points within his grasp on his comeback when he was involved in a collision at the restart after a safety car period. The race-leading Lamborghini had failed to get going properly, triggering a chain reaction of which Ren\u00e9 Rast was also a victim. On Sunday, he missed the top ten and points by only 1.4 seconds in 12th place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the solid but not perfect season opener, the MAN trucks from ABT Sportsline will tackle the 2,500-kilometre return journey to Kempten on Monday morning. By the time the transporters arrive in the Allg\u00e4u region, the team\u2019s engineers will have long since analysed all the data in order to be even stronger at the Lausitzring from 20 to 22 May compared to Portim\u00e3o, especially in qualifying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The start of the new DTM season has confirmed one fact above all: The record grid of 29 GT cars from six different brands has not only quantity to offer but also quality. On the demanding racetrack of Portim\u00e3o in the south of Portugal, the fastest 24 drivers were covered by a single second on … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Solid but not perfect DTM season opener for ABT Sportsline”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4074,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072\/revisions\/4074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eurotuningnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}