Winner Matteo Cairoli battled Nicki Thiim with limited resources—and prevailed despite being completely exhausted: Did the heat work in his favor?
What kind of duel for the win was that in Sunday’s DTM race at the Lausitzring? Leading Emil Frey Ferrari driver Matteo Cairoli turned off the air conditioning—with an outside temperature of 32 degrees and nearly 70 degrees in the cockpit—as Nicki Thiim closed in rapidly after his final pit stop. The Dane in the Aston Martin, with tires that had ten fewer laps under their belt, was about half a second faster per lap.
And he quickly closed the 2.5-second gap. “Everything was against me, but I said to myself: Not this time!” winner Cairoli revealed after the race. “I was on a very worn set of tires, the brakes were overheating—and to be completely honest: I sometimes closed my eyes because I thought I wouldn’t be able to brake the car in time or make the turn.”
He “really prayed that I’d close every door and not make a mistake,” said the completely sweaty Italian, who successfully fended off Thiim’s attacks. “That was probably the hardest victory of my career so far. Partly because of the pressure and the temperature in the car.”
Did the extreme heat thwart Nicki Thiim’s victory?
In the final laps, Cairoli no longer expected to win due to the immense pressure from Thiim. And technical director Jürg Flach also says: “He closed in on us so quickly at the start that I thought: It’s over now.”
But why couldn’t the Comtoyou driver catch the new DTM leader despite his high pace? “I think if you can’t find a way past right away, it becomes difficult for the competition too,” Flach speculates—and points to the heat. “Our car is relatively vulnerable in traffic because the front and rear axles heat up—then you lose performance. In the end, he was just a tiny bit short.”
Thiim confirms what the Emil Frey technical director says. “Everything gets hot at some point,” explains the Comtoyou driver, who even kept flashing his high beams repeatedly toward the end.
“We can battle it out later in the season”
“You get close, then you have brake issues, the engine overheats—and so does the Dane,” he says with a grin. “And I thought it was just too early to make that move. We can take each other out later in the season, but I’d rather take these points to stay in touch with the leading group in the championship.”
That makes sense, because Thiim is in sixth place in the championship, just 17 points behind Cairoli—and with his second-place finish, he secured the first Aston Martin podium in DTM history. The goal of securing that result was even more important than making up for the victory he’d lost the day before.
The fact that his tires were fresher had to do with Cairoli using a set of tires at the end that, unlike Thiim’s, had already been through Saturday’s qualifying session in addition to a race stint.
Air conditioning had no effect for Thiim: “I tapped on it”
The race pushed him to his absolute limit as well. “I don’t remember what happened for half the race,” he says. “I was riding on adrenaline—and just going full throttle.”
Even the air conditioning—which was also installed by Aston Martin—wasn’t helping anymore. “I didn’t feel like it was working,” he says. “I tapped on it, but no cold air came out.”
Cairoli agrees with his rival. “It was incredibly hot, even though the air conditioning was running, but Nicki made me break a sweat,” says Jack Aitken’s successor on the Emil Frey Team. He used the air conditioning for a while, “but when I saw them catching up to me, I had to turn it off because I wanted to use the maximum available power.”
That’s because while the air conditioning helps the driver stay cool, it has a negative effect on engine performance. “It doesn’t make an extreme difference, but it’s also a mental thing,” says Cairoli, who already has two wins under his belt after six DTM races.