Maiden win in DTM Trophy: 16-year-old Theo Oeverhaus wins at Hockenheim – a dramatic turn in the title battle
Hockenheim (2 Oktober 2021). A new face on the top step of the podium in DTM Trophy: the only 16-year-old BMW driver Theo Oeverhaus from the Walkenhorst Motorsport team has won the Saturday race in the junior race series at the professional DTM platform at the Hockenheimring.
Oeverhaus benefited from a penalty for erstwhile points’ leader Ben Green. The Brit was first across the finish line with his FK Performance Motorsport BMW, but dropped back to ninth following a 30-second time penalty. And even worse for Green: that means he is losing the lead in the drivers’ standings to his compatriot William Tregurtha. The driver of the CV Performance Group Mercedes-AMG was classified second.
Throughout the 17-lap race distance, Green was showing a dominant performance. In qualifying, the Brit had secured three points for pole position and never lost the lead. However, it was the restart that did it for him after the field had been running behind the safety car. Prior to the green flags being waved, Green had dropped back too much, an infringement of the regulations. As Green didn’t come in for his penalty, this was converted into a 30-second time penalty that made the Brit drop back to ninth place.
Green and Oeverhaus were in a class of their own at the Hockenheimring. Tregurtha was only able to keep up in the opening stages and then safely brought his result home. In the drivers’ standings, he is now five points ahead of his compatriot Green, 181 vs 176 points. Behind Tregurtha, Green’s teammates Yann Zimmer from Switzerland and Moritz Löhner were battling for fourth position on the road and the final podium slot in the classification. In this exciting duel, the German eventually came out on top.
The battling group behind Löhner and Zimmer provided plenty of on-track action. Swiss Audi driver Lucas Mauron (Heide-Motorsport) and KTM driver Reinhard Kofler (True Racing by Reiter Engineering) from Austria thrilled the spectators with exciting wheel-to-wheel duels in the first half of the race. Kofler eventually secured fifth place in the classification in a commanding way. At the finish, Mauron was eight seconds down on the Austrian. Toyota driver Stéphane Kox (Ring-Racing) from The Netherlands was classified eighth as the best-placed female driver in the field.
The second DTM Trophy at the Hockenheimring gets underway on Sunday at 3.10pm. The race is shown live from 3.05pm on SPORT1+, on the DTM Grid streaming portal (grid.dtm.com) and the DTM’s official YouTube channel.
Image: DTM
