Mirko Bortolotti crossed the finish line first in Race 2 at Oschersleben. His Grasser Racing crew celebrated. The scoreboard showed the Lamborghini. The Temerario GT3 had, officially, its maiden win in global competition — for about the next few hours.
Then the stewards opened the car.
A post-race technical inspection found that the wheel bearing in Bortolotti’s Lamborghini Temerario GT3 did not conform to DTM-GT3 homologation requirements. Specifically, the part didn’t match the reference specification required under Article 5.1 of the sporting regulations. The stewards’ decision: disqualification from the race result.
What had been a historic first for an entirely new race car became a benefit for Maro Engel, who now inherits Race 2 victory on the revised results — with Thomas Preining moving to second and Marco Wittmann to third.
A Clarification Document With Teeth
Grasser Racing isn’t treating this as settled, and their argument deserves more than a dismissal.
Team principal Gottfried Grasser points to Article 2 of the DTM regulations, which states that clarification documents published in the official DTM download center carry regulatory validity. One of those documents — Clarification 04 — explicitly states, in Grasser’s reading, that wheel bearings are frei (free), meaning they are not subject to the homologation reference-part requirement that the stewards applied under Article 5.1.
The team’s position: if a valid, publicly available clarification frees a component from homologation scrutiny, Article 5 cannot then be invoked to disqualify a car for that same component. The stewards disagree. Both interpretations have a coherent basis in the regulations — which is precisely why Grasser filed a formal appeal.
“This is why we filed an appeal,” Grasser said. “The appeals court must decide what is correct.”
The Oschersleben results remain provisional pending that ruling. This isn’t a simple case of a team running an illegal part and hoping nobody noticed. It’s a genuine regulatory grey zone — the kind where the outcome depends not on which car was fastest, but on which paragraph in which document takes precedence. We’ve seen similar disputes before, including in Supercars this season, where a millimetre-undersized restrictor quietly invalidated an entire driver’s year — and the lesson is consistent: when the parts list and the clarification sheet say different things, someone has to lose.
Why the Temerario Makes This Sting More
Context matters. The Lamborghini Temerario GT3 is a brand-new race car in 2026, replacing the long-serving Huracán GT3 that carried Bortolotti himself to the DTM title in 2023. New cars bring new unknowns — not just in setup and development, but in the regulatory detail surrounding every homologated component. When a new car goes through its first season of technical inspections, the rulebook gets tested in ways that don’t always show up during pre-season preparation.
Grasser came to Oschersleben already running a single-car entry after a second-car withdrawal. Bortolotti delivered under those leaner conditions, built a race-winning performance across a difficult weekend, and then got stripped of the result in the tech shed.
For the Temerario GT3, the win count in global competition remains at zero. That distinction belongs to the next event it actually clears scrutineering.
What the Championship Absorbs
The direct beneficiary is Engel, who now carries Race 2 into his results column and pushes his championship lead over Nicki Thiim to 21 points. With 145 points through five rounds, the WINWARD Racing Mercedes driver is managing the season well enough that even an inherited win looks like business as usual.
Bortolotti sits 10th with 73 points — below where a former champion and factory-backed operation should realistically be mid-season. Whether the appeal restores any of that depends on what the appeals court makes of Clarification 04, and how literally it reads the word frei.
Technical regulations in motorsport have a habit of producing outcomes nobody planned for. Formula 1’s 2026 engine development framework has its own structural ambiguity built in — a reminder that grey zones aren’t exclusive to GT racing.
The appeal is filed. The result is provisional. And the Temerario is still waiting on its first official win.
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