Who will celebrate at the Sachsenring? Four-way battle at the top of the ADAC GT Masters

The ADAC GT Masters is picking up speed again after the summer break. This weekend (8th to 10th September), the ADAC’s iconic GT series is at the Sachsenring for the fourth round of the season. ADAC Stiftung Sport driver Finn Gehrsitz (Stuttgart) and Sven Müller (Bingen/both Team Joos by Racemotion) travel as championship leaders to the undulating, 3.645-kilometre track in Hohenstein-Ernstthal. There, the Porsche duo will face the returning Maximilian Götz (Uffenheim): the 2012 champion will share the cockpit of a Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Romania’s Petru Umbrarescu (both Haupt Racing Team), as he makes his second appearance of the season. At the Sachsenring and the remaining two rounds, the ADAC GT Masters races will feature on the high-profile DTM platform. TV partner Sport1 is showing all the races live and in full on free-to-air TV. 

“I am really looking forward to the second half of the season. It feels good to be in first place at the halfway point. That confirms all the hard work that the whole team has been doing. We want to carry on where we left off. First place is very hard-fought, and the field is evenly matched. It is important for Finn and me to continue picking up points consistently,” says championship leader Müller. Just three points back, Salman Owega (Cologne) and Elias Seppänen (FIN) are within striking distance. The two Landgraf Motorsport drivers have won two races in their Mercedes-AMG GT3. Jannes Fittje (Langenhain) and Nico Menzel (Kelberg/both Huber Motorsport) lie fourth with their Porsche 911 GT3 R, just ten points behind the leaders. Victory in race six of the season at the Nürburgring brought Benjamin Hites (CHL) and Lamborghini works driver Marco Mapelli (I) into the reckoning with the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2. The duo from the GRT Grasser Racing Team trail the leaders by 18 points. Götz also has his sights set on a top result when he makes his second appearance of 2023 alongside team-mate Umbrarescu. The 2021 DTM champion has six ADAC GT Masters wins to his name. Huber Racing will miss the second half of the season. The Porsche team has been forced to cut their season short due to health issues affecting team principal Christoph Huber.

The Sachsenring poses a special challenge for the drivers at the start of the second half of the season: drops with a maximum gradient of 12.8 percent and climbs of up to ten percent are characteristic of the Sachsenring. “The asphalt at the Sachsenring is a bit coarser than at other tracks, which puts the tyres under more strain. There are a lot of left turns, which put both man and machine to the test. The circuit has fast and slow sections. Some blind passages also make the Sachsenring a real challenge. It is very difficult to find the perfect set-up,” says three-time race winner Müller, describing the features of the Sachsenring.