Looking back: A valiant effort from Manthey EMA in the 2024 DTM season

Repeating the clean sweep of titles secured by Preining (drivers' champion), Manthey EMA (teams' champion) and Porsche (manufacturers' champion) in 2023 was always going to be a tall order the following year, with Porsche's presence in the DTM reduced from six full-time customer cars to just two.

But two Porsche 911 GT3 R were still enough to bolster the marque’s track record in the DTM, with Preining's win from pole at the Lausitzring a highlight of the campaign which saw him finish fifth overall.

An uneven start

Like in 2023, the DTM season spanned eight rounds - six in Germany, two in other parts of Europe - on the same eight tracks as before, albeit in a different sequence.

As now the sole Porsche customer in the DTM field, Manthey EMA went into the season with major changes to the trackside staff - as many from last year's title-winning squad had switched to its World Endurance Championship operation, which would deliver yet another WEC crown for the Porsche 911 in the LMGT3 class.

Despite the turnover, things were "pretty positive" in the traditional start-of-season Hockenheim test, for both Preining and team newcomer Ayhancan Güven - the former Porsche junior, who had already been part of Manthey EMA and Porsche's Bathurst 12 Hour title earlier in 2024.

But neither Preining nor Güven could get much out of the DTM season opener at Oschersleben, with results falling short of expectations.

Though the cars "lacked pace all weekend", Preining did manage to gain a combined total of 10 places relative to his starting position in the two races - which then set him up nicely to return to his familiar frontrunning place in the DTM the next weekend at Lausitzring.

Both he and Güven qualified excellently for Saturday's race there and fought at the front early on, but as the track suddenly got soaked by rain - going from fully dry to fully wet in the matter of moments - Güven, by virtue of being behind on track, drew the short straw.

He was left out for an extra lap as Preining dived into the pits first, but having to navigate a drenched Lausitzring on slick tyres led to an off, effectively removing Güven from the battle out front. Late-race contact added insult to injury, and another good qualifying couldn't be converted due to more contact on Sunday.

There was no such drama for Preining, who on Saturday brought the car home in third, then put it on pole the following day. It laid the groundwork for a win that still had to be secured in brilliant wheel-to-wheel battle with two Audis, first of Ricardo Feller and then of Kelvin van der Linde.

Hanging in there

The contrasting emotions of Oschersleben and Lausitzring set the tone for the season, as track-to-track variance and the series' Balance of Performance - a mechanism seeking to equalise the performance of different cars through mechanisms like minimum ride heights, minimum weights and air restrictor sizes - inevitably led to highs and lows.

Zandvoort was the latter. Preining again bagged points from lowly starting positions - though was also hampered by a grid penalty for impeding - while Güven suffered punctures in both races through no fault of his own.

"He made a big step forward and doesn't deserve to go home empty-handed," lamented the team's managing director Nicolas Raeder.

In the first race at the Norisring, both drivers ended up on the wrong end of the kind of on-the-fly strategy decisions always forced by inconsistent weather. But fortune repaid Manthey EMA somewhat on Sunday, as a late-race safety car triggered by debris enabled Preining to go from eighth to sixth and Güven from 10th to eighth.

Nürburgring was marginally more lucrative, despite some misfortune. In a feisty wet race on Saturday, Preining had to let two drivers through for what was deemed an illegal overtake, but finished ahead of both anyway in seventh, while more had been on offer for Güven before he crossed the white line on pit exit and then had a race-ruining collision with a rival.

Güven's travails compounded on Sunday. He was on provisional pole for more than half of qualifying, held on a drying track, but couldn't get a lap together when conditions were at their absolute best, so started at the back instead of pole.

Yet, typically for Güven's rollercoaster season, it set him up for a superbly-executed race - capitalising on an overcut strategy - that yielded a fifth place.

The 'overcut' proved more fruitful than Preining's 'undercut' in that race - although that strategy had put the 2023 champion up into the podium fight, before he was barged off track and was eventually classified in seventh.

A grid penalty for accumulating three warnings cost Preining a fitting pole position at the Sachsenring - a track primarily synonymous with the German motorcycle Grand Prix, which is an event Preining's father Andy contested (albeit at different tracks, before the Sachsenring was built).

Preining finished that race in sixth after a hard duel with van der Linde, then made the most of an early pitstop to power his way into fourth in the second race.

Meanwhile, Güven's wildly eventful season continued, as a technical issue hampered him in practice, a slow puncture forced a retirement on Saturday and a 15-second penalty for contact cost him eighth place on Sunday.

By that point in the season, the results had belied Güven's speed. And that would also prove true at the Red Bull Ring, where Saturday was the stage of a memorable wets-to-slicks 12th-to-fifth charge, and then on Sunday he was forced off track and out of contention while in the mix for a podium.

Instead, Preining delivered said podium - having fought past Rene Rast and eventual champion Mirko Bortolotti, but then running out of time to overtake Rast again for the win after the German had got ahead on strategy.

The campaign concludes

It wasn't quite enough to keep Preining in mathematical title contention coming into the Hockenheim finale - where again one Manthey EMA driver scored big on Saturday, and the other did so on Sunday.

Güven and Preining both ran well in a rain-hit first qualifying session, but while Preining went backwards in the race Güven converted third on the grid into third at the finish, for his long-awaited second DTM podium with Porsche and his first with Manthey EMA.

The following day Güven's season ended with a promising charge fizzling out due to early bodywork damage, but Preining ran close behind him when it happened and was there to pick up the slack - working his way up to fourth place before successfully soaking up pressure from several cars behind to maintain the spot until the chequered flag.

In doing so, Preining - who pulled over on the cooldown lap to congratulate his champion successor Bortolotti - also ensured that he had scored points in every second race for a second straight season, in a streak that has now reached 32 starts.

Preining finished fifth in the drivers' standings, with teammate Güven relegated to 16th by his final-race setback. Porsche placed fifth in the manufacturers' championship, with its sole representative Manthey EMA settling for sixth in the teams' standings.

The team did get a title, though - prevailing in the Pitstop Challenge rankings, determined by pitstop times through the season.