Thomas Preining, driving towards a dream
In 2022, he still looked like one of the absolute promises of European motorsport, and just one year later, that promise has been fulfilled with a victory at the last round to win the 2023 DTM season. We are talking about Thomas Preining, born in 1998, Austrian from Linz, currently an official Porsche driver in various championships as well as in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, where he races in the Manthey EMA team.
Although still only 25 years old, Prening, before joining Porsche, has already had important experience in various series and championships in which he has shown himself to be a clean but determined driver, as well as for his cheerful and friendly smile.
The beginnings in Formula 4
He began his career at just 17 years old in Formula 4 with the German ADAC Berlin-Brandenburg team, for which he competed in the first two rounds of the ADAC Formula 4 championship, taking the podium at Oschersleben and finishing the season with 16 points. Again in 2015, Prening participated in the Italian F4 Championship, competing in one race. The following year, he earned a regular presence in the ADAC F4 by racing for the Austrian Lechner Racing team. His first full season ended with two wins, four podiums and fourth place overall in the championship, just 13 points behind the winner. Like the year before, Preining participated also in one race of the Italian F4 Championship.
The arrival on GTs: the Porsche Carrera Cup Germany
2017 marked Preining's transition from single-seaters to Grand Touring cars, with which he raced in the Porsche Carrera Cup in Germany for Konrad Motorsport. In that year he won two races: a good debut full of promise that was confirmed in 2018, when Preining with the Lechner Racing team took 10 victories out of 14 races and won the championship with a 37-point lead over the second.
Debut and success in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters
The 2022 is the year of his debut and full-time assignment in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, at the wheel of the Porsche 911 GT3 R of KÜS Team Bernhard. After an uncertain start, Preining won his first DTM race at the fourth round of the season and then, after a thrilling run, won his home race at the Red Bull Ring: here he started from seventh position and, overtaking after overtaking, on a wet track took the lead. At the last round of the season at the Hockenheimring, Preining was among the candidates for the final victory, but on Saturday, he was involved in a serious accident in which his car was damaged, but he was fortunately unhurt. The doctors, however, deemed him unfit to race on Sunday, wiping out his chances of victory.
He will only have to wait a year to crown himself DTM champion. In 2023, Preining joined the Manthey EMA team and with three victories and five more podiums, he won the season, at the last round, beating Mirco Bortolotti.
The 2024 season opened quietly for the Austrian driver, who in the opening round of the DTM at Oschersleben took tenth place in race 1 and thirteenth in race 2. But no one is alarmed either at Manthey EMA or at Porsche. The championship is long and Prening has already proved to be an ace comeback driver.
