From P11 to the podium: Ricardo Feller surprises at the Nürburgring with a risky strategy that threw even the favorites off their game
No one saw it coming: Ricardo Feller, who started the race in eleventh place, took almost the entire field by surprise in Saturday’s DTM race at the Nürburgring. At one point, he even looked like a possible winner, but in the final stint he had to bow to the two Emil Frey Ferraris of winner Jack Aitken and Ben Green. Nevertheless, the Swiss driver is Saturday’s match winner.
Both were equally surprised that they even encountered each other. “Ricky wasn’t really on my radar. When they said I’d be battling him at the pit exit, I was a little surprised,” admits Aitken. Feller echoes this sentiment: “I never expected us to finish so far ahead.”
Feller started the race from eleventh on the grid. At the restart, he was ninth and gained two more places – one against Marco Wittmann on the track and one due to Maro Engel’s penalty. In seventh place, he then pitted at the first opportunity and almost caught everyone with an undercut.
“We took a risk with the strategy,” he admits. But it paid off: “No one had us on their radar. No one reacted to us. It just went well.” Many teams were clearly still remembering last year, when the strategy of stopping late had been advantageous. But this time, the classic undercut trumped everything.
Another factor that played a role and was incomprehensible to TV viewers was that Feller was on a different tire strategy. Since the top 10 in the DTM have to start on the tires they used in qualifying, but Feller started from P11, he was able to start with fresh tires. When he then took the worn tires during the pit stop, he was able to bring them up to temperature much faster than his opponents could with their brand-new Pirellis.
Jordan Pepper explains why no one reacted: “It was a great move on their part. I don’t think anyone paid attention to him because he wasn’t in contention for the championship. We had him on our radar, but we knew that if we came into the pits, Auer would cover us. That would have triggered a chain reaction.”
What a fight for P1!
Watch the last minutes live https://t.co/IXImB5TzeeDTM2025 @nuerburgring pic.twitter.com/eTjVdUZdsi
— DTM (@DTM) August 9, 2025
Pepper was right behind Auer before the stops. Both were overtaken by Feller due to their late stops. “We just tried to forget about Feller today and see if we could attack him at the end. We got close, but P4 is perfect for me.”
Ferrari’s superiority only due to the tires?
Aitken had not yet fully digested the surprising announcement over the radio that he would be fighting Feller for the lead when it all kicked off: “When I came out of the pits, he was of course immediately in my rearview mirror. So I held him up for a few corners, but then he got past me on the back straight.”
But then Feller slid off the track at the Veedol chicane and relinquished the lead. However, Aitken’s tires were still not fully up to speed, allowing the Land Audi to regain the lead. Only to be caught again shortly afterwards by Aitken and the other Brit, Ben Green, when Aitken’s tires reached their peak.
“In the end, it was clear that I couldn’t hold the lead based on pure speed. Of course, the tires also played a role,” said Feller. “My rear tires were already pretty worn when we started battling. So, naturally, he had a big advantage. But we could already see in qualifying that we just didn’t have the pace to fight for the lead. That’s why the podium feels even better.”
That was the diplomatic way of putting it. On the radio, it sounded quite different during the race: “They’re managing it really well.” To which his engineer replied: “All these BoP changes and they’re still beating us [on the straights] like crazy.”
Aitken also refers to the fresher tires: “The tires definitely helped. I mean, our tires were about 18 laps fresher than Ricky’s, which makes a big difference. The longer the stint went on, the worse it got for them.”
“We had a nice battle for a few corners, side by side. Yeah, that was fun. Once I got past, I just wanted to get away from the chaos behind me. Ben and I were able to build a small lead, but it was really hard to maintain the gap and keep the guys behind us at bay.”
Even for him, it wasn’t easy to keep the tires in the window: “It’s very warm today and we really had to go flat out at the end. Fortunately, we were safe thanks to our small lead.”
