Preining didn’t put a foot wrong all day, claiming pole position in his Manthey EMA Porsche before leading every lap outside of the pitstop cycle to bag a maximum haul of 28 points.
For a long time it appeared that the Austrian would be able to wrap up the title as his nearest rival Mirko Bortolotti sat down in seventh, but the Lamborghini racer was able to clear the Audi of Kelvin van der Linde with just over 10 minutes left on the clock to take the fight to the final race of the season on Sunday.
Preining will go into the finale with a 27-point lead in the standings, which means he could wrap up the title as early as qualifying if his Italian rival fails to get the bonus points for pole or second on the grid.
At the start of the race, Preining made a clean start from pole position to hold the lead into Turn 1, with team-mate Dennis Olsen jumping the Grasser Lamborghini of DTM returnee Christian Engelhart to establish a Manthey EMA 1-2.
Preining slowly and steadily built a lead of over a second in the first stint of the race, with Olsen acting as a rear-gunner and keeping Engelhart at bay.
With Preining unthreatened at the front, the attention turned towards Bortolotti, who needed to finish inside the top six in order to stay in the title hunt.
Having lost a lap that would have been good enough for pole in qualifying to track limits, the SSR Performance driver started the race from eighth and was unable to make much headways in the first stint of the race, running seventh behind the Abt Audis of Ricardo Feller - the last remaining runner in the title fight - and van der Linde.
When the pit window open at the 20-minute mark, Emil Frey's Jack Aitken and Feller were the first among the leading group to stop for fresh tyres, with van der Linde and Bortolotti following in the next lap.
Source: Autosport