Will the bitter penalty for Maro Engel after the collision with Kelvin van der Linde cost him the DTM title? The Winward Mercedes driver, who had started from pole position at the DTM race at Sachsenring on Sunday, was running sixth at the restart a few laps from the end, while DTM leader Thomas Preining was second.
Under braking for the first corner, he touched the rear of Kelvin van der Linde's BMW with his left front and pushed him into the gravel trap. Engel crossed the line fifth, but was classified only 17th because of the 15-second penalty. As a result, he loses all eleven points - and is 23 points behind Preining in the overall standings ahead of the finale at Hockenheim.
"Certainly not a happy situation," Engel says of the incident with van der Linde. "Of course we had to attack, we were in a difficult position - and unfortunately that went wrong." Overall, it had been "not a particularly good race from our side - from my side".
"Just made too many mistakes today - whether it was the strategy, whether it was from my side on the track," Engel says, dissatisfied with himself and his Winward team.
15-second penalty: Why the stewards had no choice
The stewards had no choice with the verdict: Engel immediately took the blame entirely on himself at the hearing. Because of the late braking move, the ABS had intervened - after that he had only been a passenger. In this respect, 15 seconds is the usual penalty.
That corresponds to three penalty laps of five seconds each. Because with the move, Engel ended van der Linde's race early. Apart from that: had Engel received only a five-second penalty, he would also have been 17th, because the field was still so compact after the restart.
How do they view the accident at Mercedes-AMG? "Maro had good tyres and knew he had to attack with them. And the preceding safety car period lasted a long time. Then time runs away from you - and then he simply wanted that little bit too much," says Thomas Jager, who serves as sporting director of the DTM programme at Mercedes-AMG.
Did the strategy put Engel in the difficult position?
"It is known that you get three penalty laps if you take the competitor out of the race and he can no longer continue," he has no issue with the penalty.
But what does Engel mean by the strategic error? "In hindsight, it was probably the wrong decision to start on the used slick. That made ourselves vulnerable at the beginning," says the Winward Mercedes driver, who had already slid off the wet track on the formation lap and then had no chance against eventual winner Ben Dörr, who had started on new slicks.
Engel in the Porsche trap: "Been attacked very hard a couple of times"
Then Engel also wore himself out in the duel against Preining's Porsche stablemate Bastian Buus, who dropped back on rain tyres and cost him around five seconds, and Ricardo Feller.
"I was certainly attacked very hard a few times as well," Engel says. "But when you're at the front of the championship, you have to assume that in the end you will be attacked hard by the team-mates of the other rivals."
Only as a result of that was Preining, who was in seventh place after the first lap, able to overtake Engel on track - and Kelvin van der Linde and Luca Engstler also seized the opportunity.
Should Engel have stopped earlier?
"Actually, he only found the pace again after the respective pit stops. And unfortunately that was then the reason he was shuffled so far back," explains Jager. Because the pit stop also offered the opportunity to adjust the tyre pressure again.
The fact that Engel only stopped on lap twelve, even though the first pit-stop window allowed tyre changes from lap five onwards, was also not ideal. According to information from Motorsport-Total.com, there were also discussions about this on the radio.
That fits with Engel's statement that "strategy-whise my communication with the team" was also not optimal. "In hindsight you are always wiser, but if you don't have the pace, then you could certainly have stopped earlier," Jager also says.
