And the man with the biggest target on his back is Porsche superstar Thomas Preining.
The Austrian arrives at the legendary Hockenheimring with a commanding 23-point advantage over his nearest challenger.
But with 56 points still available across the final weekend, the champagne will have to stay firmly on ice.
Preining, already a DTM champion, knows exactly what it takes to survive the pressure of a title fight. Driving for Manthey, the Porsche ace has put himself in the driving seat for a second championship crown.
But Mercedes-AMG star Maro Engel is breathing down his neck, and BMW veteran Marco Wittmann, a two-time champion, is lurking dangerously in the background. Both have the experience, machinery and determination to turn Preining’s dream weekend into an absolute nightmare.
Then come the outsiders. Mercedes driver Lucas Auer, Ferrari racer Matteo Cairoli and Aston Martin’s Nicki Thiim all retain mathematical chances of snatching the championship.
For those three, however, it would take something approaching a motorsport miracle. They need brilliant results — and some serious misfortune for the men ahead.
There could hardly be a more fitting battlefield.
The Hockenheimring has hosted the DTM season finale more than 30 times, earning its reputation as the place where champions are crowned and reputations shattered.
Its 4.5-kilometre Grand Prix circuit demands precision, courage and nerves of steel.
Get your braking wrong and a rival can pounce. Make a mistake in traffic and an entire season’s hard work could disappear in seconds.
And nobody needs reminding what happened here last year.
Turkish racer Ayhancan Güven snatched the 2025 championship with a breathtaking late move against Wittmann at the Sachs-Kurve.
It was the sort of dramatic finish that makes motorsport irresistible.
Now Wittmann is back, determined to ensure history does not repeat itself at his expense.
The DTM is no ordinary racing championship. This is a contest in which some of the biggest names in the motor industry throw their engineering expertise into a furious battle for supremacy.
Porsche, Mercedes-AMG, BMW, Ferrari and Aston Martin are represented among the six title contenders, and with GT3 machinery producing spectacular performance, the racing promises to be fierce.
Unlike Formula One, where aerodynamic advantages can sometimes leave the field stretched out, DTM’s competitive format regularly produces close battles, aggressive overtaking and unpredictable finishes.
Track position is precious. Pit-stop execution matters enormously. And a poorly timed safety car can transform the championship picture.
One moment a driver can be heading towards glory, the next, he can be staring at disaster.
Saturday’s race begins at 1.30pm local time, with Sunday’s championship decider scheduled for 4.30pm.
That leaves precious little room for error.
For Preining, the equation is straightforward: protect the advantage without becoming so defensive that his challengers seize the initiative.
For Engel and Wittmann, the message is equally clear. Attack.
They cannot afford to sit behind the Porsche and hope for the best.
And should Saturday’s race produce a major surprise, Sunday’s finale could become an extraordinary winner-takes-all spectacle.
Away from the championship battle, Hockenheim is preparing a full-blown motorsport festival.
The supporting programme includes the ADAC GT Masters, Porsche Carrera Cup Germany, ADAC GT4 Germany and BMW M2 Cup. Fans can also enjoy pit-lane walks, driver appearances and live entertainment.
But the biggest attraction remains the battle on the circuit. Six drivers started the weekend with a mathematical chance of becoming champion. Only one can leave with the crown.
When the chequered flag falls on Sunday evening, there could be tears, triumph — and the sort of last-lap drama that makes the DTM one of Europe’s great racing spectacles.
The 2026 Asian Games in Japan drew to a close on October 4 following two weeks of competition between 45 countries and territories across 43 sports. Despite the official slogan “Imagine One Asia,” fragmented regional politics came to the fore as the event unfolded. Just days before the games officially began, tensions between Japan and […]
The post How geopolitical tensions tainted the 2026 Asian Games appeared first on Asia Times.
There are few sporting rivalries capable of transporting an entire stadium thousands of miles away from home. On Saturday, India and Pakistan managed precisely that — turning a modest Japanese baseball facility into an arena charged with all the anticipation, colour and emotion normally associated with the great cricket grounds of South Asia.
The setting could hardly have been more incongruous. The Asian Games final was being staged at Korogi Athletic Park in Nisshin, near Nagoya, a purpose-built cricket venue with capacity for only about 2,500 spectators. Beyond the boundary stood the unmistakable features of a Japanese baseball ground, including a pitcher’s mound.
Yet for those inside, this was no novelty fixture.
Hours before the first ball, Indian and Pakistani supporters were queuing to enter. Flags were draped over shoulders, shirts provided the national colours and tickets had become sufficiently scarce to generate reports of inflated resale prices. For many members of the South Asian communities living in Japan, the occasion represented a rare chance to see the two countries meet in person.
That matters because India-Pakistan cricket is not simply another international sporting contest. Political tensions mean that the teams generally encounter each other only in major tournaments, making every meeting an event in its own right. Their February T20 World Cup encounter in Sri Lanka was played before a sell-out crowd of 35,000; television audiences in the two countries routinely run into the hundreds of millions.
Japan therefore found itself hosting one of cricket’s most valuable commodities: scarcity.
For Japanese spectators, meanwhile, the spectacle offered an introduction to a sport that remains distinctly niche in the country. Some had attended earlier matches simply out of curiosity. Teachers from nearby Gifu admitted that they knew virtually nothing about cricket, but found themselves enjoying the experience after reading explanatory material and watching the action.
The comparison with baseball is inevitable. Japan possesses one of the world’s great baseball cultures, while cricket remains a relative outsider. But the recent arrival of India has provided an intriguing bridge between the two.
Last week, Japan played India in its first-ever T20 international against a full-member cricket nation. The hosts came within two runs of a remarkable victory in a rain-shortened five-over contest, giving Japanese cricket precisely the sort of exposure its administrators could scarcely have manufactured themselves.
The significance extends beyond the scoreboard.
India’s appearance in Japan was linked to the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the countries, while the Asian Games have provided an unusually prominent platform for cricket. The sport is already established among expatriate communities, but encounters involving India’s global stars can introduce it to an entirely new audience.
That is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Saturday’s extraordinary scene. Cricket did not need to conquer Japan overnight. It merely needed to persuade a few thousand people to come and watch.
And India versus Pakistan is perhaps the ultimate sales pitch.
The match was always going to generate passion. What nobody could have guaranteed was that the passion would survive the journey from the packed stadiums of Colombo and Mumbai to a small baseball field outside Nagoya.
It did.
The geography changed. The rivalry did not.
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