After finishing 11th at the Nürburgring, Nicki Thiim loses his temper: The Aston Martin driver accuses AMG of scheduling races specifically to target him and says he feels “driven to the brink”
Aston Martin title contender Nicki Thiim is completely beside himself after finishing 11th in the DTM Saturday race at the Nürburgring (race report)—and lashes out at the series and Mercedes-AMG. “I thought Oschersleben was bad, but this is absolutely next level. I’m incredibly disappointed. What’s happening here right now is just outrageous,” the Dane rages.
Above all, the battle with Landgraf-Mercedes driver Tom Kalender for ninth place and the penalty lap are driving him up the wall. “It’s ridiculous what’s going on here. “With Tom, it’s clear what his job was: not to let me pass at any cost!” he accuses Mercedes-AMG of having instructed Kalender to help Thiim’s teammates Maro Engel and Lucas Auer, who are battling for the title.
“That was crystal clear on the first lap. Completely pushed into the dirt—at the exit of Turn 5,” Thiim says, alluding to the incident in which Luca Engstler slipped through. On the third lap, he then tried to pass Kalender in the chicane.
“I’m already noticing how things work here in the DTM”
“And he cuts completely across in the braking zone,” even though there’s “that nice rule” in the DTM that you “can trust each other. But yeah, like I said: That was his absolute goal—not to let us pass so he could help his nice colleague.”
But even aside from that, the first day of racing—with an eleventh-place grid position and an eleventh-place finish—was frustrating. “It’s just unbelievable. It’s like I’m fighting with a stick—and the others with a gun,” he says. “Zero pace, zero chance. But I’m starting to get a feel for how things work here in the DTM,” Thiim says, getting worked up again.
And he hints that the different manufacturers in the DTM aren’t treated equally. “The other manufacturers get these moments of glory—at the Norisring, the Lausitzring. And then we get completely sidelined,” says the mid-season champion, who feels he’s been treated unfairly by the Balance of Performance (BoP) after his two strong weekends.
Kalender on Thiim’s attack: “Then he still goes for it”
“And now Ferrari gets a moment here—and then it’ll continue like this tomorrow. That’s why it’s hard to take what’s happening right now seriously, because there’s no consistency. It’s just outrageous.”
In the overall standings, Thiim is now in fourth place, 30 points behind DTM leader Engel. But what does Engel’s Mercedes-AMG teammate Kalender actually have to say about the controversial duel with the Dane?
“I think it was very obvious—I specifically looked in the mirror,” he says of the maneuver on the third lap, when Thiim tried to pass on the inside of the chicane from far behind. “I was driving down the straight and decided not to block him because it just wasn’t feasible—and then he cut in anyway.”
Why Thiim received a penalty lap
“It’s not the first time—he’s already pushed me off the track once before at Oschersleben. It wasn’t as serious as this time, but to be honest, I don’t think it’s very sportsmanlike,” the 18-year-old stated clearly.
It was serious because Kalender came into the pits afterward and parked his Landgraf Mercedes—the exhaust tip had been completely bent out of shape by the contact.
That was also the reason why the matter was clear to Race Director Sven Stoppe: Thiim had hit Kalender’s exhaust—which was positioned in front of the rear wheel—with his right front fender, so he wasn’t even close to being level with it—and received a penalty lap for the push-out, which is equivalent to five seconds.
