DTM | 2026 Zandvoort | Free Practice 1 | Cairoli leads the way as home hero Vermeulen takes P5

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Free Practice 1 at Zandvoort marked the start of the second race weekend of the 2026 DTM season, as the field arrived in the Netherlands after a dramatic and revealing opener at the Red Bull Ring. During the opening round, Austria delivered disrupted running, changing conditions and strategic challenges, giving teams little room for error while they adapted to the new tyre and an already tightly packed field.

Mercedes-AMG and Porsche emerged as early benchmarks, with Maro Engel, Lucas Auer and Thomas Preining all making strong starts to the campaign. Preining claimed victory in Race 1 on home soil, while Engel responded in Race 2 with a composed drive built around timing, tyre management and execution in the pit window. Behind them, Marco Wittmann also underlined BMW’s potential with a podium finish.

For others, the Red Bull Ring proved more difficult. Lamborghini’s new Temerario GT3 faced a challenging debut weekend, while Aston Martin relied on Balance of Performance adjustments to move closer to the pace. With Kelvin van der Linde showing strong one-lap speed but losing ground during the race phases, and several teams still searching for consistency, Zandvoort offered the first real chance to respond.

Mapelli penalised for Zandvoort test regulation breach

Following the decision, Race Control announced that the stewards had fined #10 Marco Mapelli €1,000 and given him a drive-through penalty for the next DTM race for breaching the test regulations ahead of the Zandvoort event. However, the stewards suspended the drive-through penalty for the rest of the season.

Mapelli breached the regulations by carrying out driving activities on a DTM racetrack without DTM tyres and only registering them in the official test portal while the test was already underway.

Cairoli leads early Ferrari one-two as DTM Free Practice 1 gets underway at Zandvoort

As the track went green for Free Practice 1 at Zandvoort the whole DTM grid went out to set a lap around the Dutch circuit. While the teams want to figure out the right details for the Qualifying and Race sessions this weekend the fastest lap for the moment went to Matteo Cairoli shortly followed by his teammate and home hero Thierry Vermeulen and Mercedes-AMG driver Engel.

While the Lamborghini’s appeared to find pace around the Dutch circuit, with Luca Engstler taking P3 behind the two Emil Frey Racing Ferraris, both Comtoyou Racing Aston Martins and both Mercedes-AMG Team Landgraf cars occupied the final four positions. As Timo Glock went wide and into the gravel, forcing him to go into the pits for new tires. Meanwhile Arjun Maini needed to go back into the garage as his front left caught on fire.

Preining breaks Ferrari’s early hold as lap times begin to fall

Ferrari seemed to be the team to beat as Dutch driver Vermeulen still led the pack with the fastest lap so far followed by his teammate with a gap of 0.006 seconds. With 33 minutes left in Free Practice 1 at Zandvoort, around half of the field had returned to the pits. As a result, the track was fairly empty for the ten cars still running, giving them a valuable chance to gather data without much traffic during the second DTM race weekend.

While the lap times didn’t go down in the first half an hour, Preining set the new fastest lap putting himself on top followed by fellow Austrian Auer and Land Motorsport driver Bastian Buus. This started the changes on the table as more drivers used more pace to set a fast lap around the Dutch circuit. With 20 minutes left on the clock, HRT seemed to have solved the problem on Maini’s Ford Mustang as the Indian driver went out back on track once again.

A spin and lap time improvements

With 17 minutes remaining, ABT Lamborghini driver Marco Mapelli spun and ran off track, although he was able to get the car going again.

Meanwhile, Preining continued to hold the top spot in Free Practice 1 at Zandvoort, ahead of Lucas Auer and home driver Thierry Vermeulen. Further back, Nicolas Baert appeared to find more pace in the Aston Martin, moving up to P12 after spending much of the session near the bottom of the order.

With about 7 minutes left on the clock almost all the cars were back on track, though the teams were preparing for some pit stop practices to see if everything works it should. Meanwhile, Van der Linde found pace on track as he put his Schubert Motorsport BMW up to P4. Another improvement was seen for Mirko Bortolotti who followed Van der Linde up and put his car directly behind him, though Cairoli seemed to have a problem with not being on top as he put himself back on top of the sheet with a 1:34.289.

As the time ran out there weren’t any further improvements of the lap times, as the drivers went back into the pits for more pit stop trainings, meaning Matteo Cairoli topped Free Practice 1 of the DTM race weekend in Zandvoort, followed by Dörr and Preining.