The DTM championship held two races at the beautiful Red Bull Ring in Austria this past weekend of Sept. 13-14, 2025, with BMW drivers René Rast and Marco Wittmann finishing one-two in race one but having a disappointing race two.
The BMWs were fast in qualifying for race one, with Wittmann on the pole in his #11 Schubert Motorsport M4 GT3 EVO, and Rast right behind him in second in the #33 M4 GT3 EVO, also run by the Schubert team. DTM racing is incredibly close. The top seven drivers were within a half-second of each other in qualifying and the top twenty cars were within a second.
Rast took control of the race from the beginning in race one, passing teammate Wittmann on lap two. The team then put in fast pit stops to keep Rast and Wittmann at the front as the pair finished one-two. It was the third win of the season for Rast and put him in the points lead, although very briefly. “Coming into the weekend, I did not imagine I had the greatest chance of winning the title – and now I am leading the championship,” said Rast. “That feels huge. One race can change everything in the DTM. The team played a big part in this win, thanks to the outstanding pit stop.”
As Rast said, one race can change everything, and race two didn’t go nearly as well for the BMWs as race one. Rast qualified in seventh, only around four-tenths of a second off the pole of Thierry Vermeulen in a Ferrari, and Wittmann was down in eighteenth. Rast put in a strong race and was in the battle for a top five finish when he was penalized for an unsafe release during the pit stop, as well crossing the white line at pit entry. The penalties dropped him to thirteenth. Wittmann moved up six positions to finish in twelfth, with the win going to Ricardo Feller in an Audi.
René Rast celebrates his race one win.
The thirteenth-place finish dropped Rast to third in driver points going into the final two races at Hockenheim on October 3rd-5th. Wittmann is seventh in driver points, and Schubert Motorsport is second in team points behind the Manthey Porsche team.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy Gruppe C Photography]
