Podium result for Porsche in rainy Saturday thriller at the Lausitzring
Saturday's ADAC GT Masters race at the Lausitzring provided excitement right up to the last second, Robert Renauer of Precote Herberth Motorsport, who was supported this time by Klaus Bachler, kept his title chances alive by finishing the race in third place only just 0.148 seconds behind the first placed Audi drivers Max Hofer and Christopher Haase of Montaplast by Land Motorsport and the second placed Mercedes-AMG duo of Indy Dontje and Maximilian Götz, of Mann-Filter-Team HTP-Winward).
The first half of the very wet race of was dominated by pole setter Robert Renauer. The Porsche driver stayed in front right from the start followed closely by the Mercedes-AMG driver Indy Dontje, who had also started from the front row. The top duo then moved away from the field slightly until the safety car deployed for three laps on lap eight to rescue Hendrik von Danwitz's Audi R8 LMS. Renauer and Dontje stayed in front until the pit stop window. Both made the driver changes to Klaus Bachler and Maximilian Götz early on.
On the other hand, the later race winners Max Hofer and Christopher Haase and the Precote Herberth Motorsport Porsche drivers Alfred Renauer and Sebastian Asch, who had previously been in fourth and fifth place, relied on a late pit stop . This tactic paid off. Haase and Asch took the lead after the pit stop window, closely followed by Bachler and Götz. The Porsche drivers and Götz then fought an exciting three-way battle for second place behind front runner Haase. Götz managed to get past Bachler first and then also to ex-champion Asch. After a late safety car phase, which ensured a three-lap sprint to the finish line, Götz Haase put under pressure again, but couldn't find a way around it.
Dontje and Götz narrowly missed the win, but were able to look forward to their first podium of the season in second. Alfred Renauer and Sebastian Asch saw the checkered flag as third, but were subsequently given a 30-second penalty for an offense under yellow flags, which resulted in the duo been demoted out of the top 10. Third place went to their team mates Robert Renauer and Klaus Bachler. As the best-placed driver among the title candidates, Renauer has reduced his points gap to the top of the table to 15 points. They defended the defending champions Patric Niederhauser and Kelvin as fifth behind the Porsche drivers David Jahn and Jannes Fittje of Küs Team75 Bernhard, the race winner of the Pirelli Junior classification went to van der Linde of Rutronik Racing in the Audi R8 LMS.
Directly behind in sixth were the overall runners-up Christian Engelhart and Michael Ammermüller. They are now two points behind in the overall standings, in the team standings their SSR Performance team is now two points ahead of Rutronik Racing three races before the end of the season. Hamza Owega and Dennis Marschall of Rutronik Racing finished seventh with their Audi, ahead of Corvette drivers Markus Pommer and Jeffrey Schmidt driving for Callaway Competition. Ricardo Feller and Stefan Mücke of BWT Mücke Motorsport completed the top 10 in another Audi R8 LMS and Constantin Schöll and Jordan Pepper of T3-HRT -Motorsport, who achieved their best result so far with the Bentley Continental GT3.