At Zandvoort, Ben Dörr made up for his disqualification at the Sachsenring and made McLaren history with a third-place finish: How he beat the GT3 stars
The breakthrough has finally come: After finishing fifth in qualifying and battling hard in Sunday’s race, McLaren youngster Ben Dörr and his team secured their first podium finish—second place—in their third DTM season. In doing so, he made history, as it was also McLaren’s first podium finish in the DTM.
When asked how it feels to finally be on the podium, the 21-year-old from Frankfurt replied succinctly after the race: “Yeah, absolutely awesome.” “We finally have our podium back,” the youngster continued.
Dörr had already managed to finish in the top 3 in the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo last year. However, Dörr was disqualified after the race at that time due to an irregular set of tires. Now, the son of team boss Reiner Dörr was able to redeem himself on the Zandvoort Dune Circuit.
What happened on Sunday?
Yet despite his performance in qualifying, this result was anything but a sure thing. While Saturday’s race won’t go down as a classic in DTM history, Sunday was extremely chaotic across the entire field.
Amid duels, pit stop problems, and spectacular crashes, Dörr kept his cool until his first stop. “When the wheel nut on the rear right got stuck during the first pit stop, I thought it was over,” Dörr said, referring to the botched stop that took 9.7 seconds.
Although the trained automotive mechatronics technician lost valuable seconds due to a stuck wheel nut on the right rear wheel, his pit stop was still far quicker than those of Maro Engel, Jules Gounon, or teammate Timo Glock. Glock’s race weekend was, as so often in the past year and a half, a performance to forget.
Meanwhile, Dörr Junior stayed on the ball and battled Aston Martin factory driver Nicki Thiim for sixth place after the pit stops. A collision between the fan favorite and Lucas Auer, along with the resulting penalty, helped Dörr pass the Dane.
His crew, however, executed the second pit stop perfectly in 7.5 seconds, propelling the youngster up to third place. Instead of succumbing to the intense pressure from Luca Engstler, Dörr took another step forward and slipped past Thierry Vermeulen’s Ferrari with just a few laps remaining.
While the Emil Frey driver struggled with worn tires, Dörr was able to squeeze past on the outside at the entrance to the Hans-Ernst-Bocht corner. “I saw that the BMW was getting closer and closer,” Dörr explained after the race.
DTM veterans hot on his heels
The youngster is referring to Marco Wittmann, who was plowing through the field. Wittmann was on the verge of driving his BMW—which had started from 13th position—onto the podium, but even DTM leader Maro Engel in the Winward Mercedes was hot on his heels.
“That was definitely a close call,” Dörr explained after the race. “I didn’t take any unnecessary risks because I would have been perfectly happy with third place. But of course, you fight until the very last second.”
“I had the inside line [and] was able to hold my ground.” Nevertheless, Dörr emphasizes: “Both drove extremely fairly. I gave him space, he gave me space.”
In the end, Dörr prevailed against Wittmann and Engel, securing the driver and his team’s first podium finish in the DTM. Shortly before the finish, he even managed to pull away slightly from the BMW, putting the Schubert driver under pressure himself.
Ben Dörr is now in sixth place in the overall standings. Meanwhile, the McLaren Dörr team can also celebrate sixth place in the team standings.
