DTM Portimão: A dream day for Nico Müller 🎥

Flop on Saturday, top on Sunday - the opening round of the 2022 DTM season at the Algarve Circuit in Portimão, Portugal, was a rollercoaster ride of emotions for Nico Müller.

Unrewarded progress on Saturday
Starting the first race in tenth place, he had to park his Audi R8 LMS GT3 evo II for safety reasons after three laps as a result of being hit by a competitor with a puncture.

But there were also positives, as the boss of Team Rosberg pointed out afterwards.

Kimmo Liimatainen: "Qualifying went in the right direction even though it didn't look like it. But Nico was the best Audi driver in tenth place and he didn't even have a free lap because of the many cars on the track. With less traffic, fifth or sixth place would have been possible for him."

Beautiful harvest on Sunday
The second day of racing showed that these were not euphemistic words. Nico Müller was the fastest in qualifying for the second race of the season, securing the first championship points of 2022.

At the start, he consistently defended his lead on the inside against Lamborghini driver Mirko Bortolotti. After 33 laps, he was flagged off as the beaming winner of a DTM race with GT3 sports cars for the first time, having previously won ten races with Class 1 touring cars and experienced a disappointing season with just one podium in 2021.

Joy reigns
The runner-up in the 2019 and 2020 championships was naturally delighted with his first DTM victory with a GT3 sports car and the eleventh overall since November 2020 at Hockenheim.

Nico Müller: "Everything went as it should today. We had the right strategy, reacted well to the pit stop of my rival Felipe Fraga and also made a good stop ourselves. Because the tire change was very early, I was a bit nervous in the meantime. In the end I had to do quite a few laps on the second set of tires. This success is particularly nice because we had a lot of problems last year. We worked hard over the winter and have now shown that we're a force to be reckoned with again."

Second overall to the next DTM event
Saturday's race was won by Lucas Auer ahead of German Luca Stolz, both on Mercedes-AMG, and Italian Mirko Bortolotti on Lamborghini. As Auer and Stolz failed to score points on Sunday, Bortolotti leads the DTM classification after Portugal ahead of Nico Müller.

With sixth place in the first race and ninth in the second, Ricardo Feller also scored his first points in one of ABT Sportsline's three Audi cars.

Ricardo Feller: "The balance of my first DTM weekend is positive. I'm very happy to have arrived in the DTM. The races are very competitive. I scored points in both races - that was a solid start to the year on which we can build. But of course it's clear that we want more. And the potential for that is there."

The next two races are scheduled for May 21 and 22 at the Lausitzring.

dtm.com