In a dominant and undisputed way, Paul Di Resta won the DTM race at the Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg on Sunday. With his Mercedes-AMG C 63 DTM, the Scot crossed the finish line after 37 laps with a margin of 13.024 seconds. For Di Resta, it is his seventh win in the DTM. His last win to date came in the autumn race at Hockenheim in 2010. Behind the Mercedes-Benz driver, BMW pairing Timo Glock and Augusto Farfus finished in second and third place.
Gary Paffett put in a great performance to finish fifth behind Maxime Martin. The Brit had been running in second behind race winner Di Resta, but dropped back to eleventh following a drive-through penalty and then made his way back up to finish fifth. Nico Müller, who had scored his maiden DTM podium finish by coming home third in Saturday, was the best-placed Audi driver in the race on Sunday, finishing eighth.
Especially in the opening stages, the race had many similarities with the race on Saturday: door-to-door battles with plenty of contact, sometimes resulting into damage. With Bruno Spengler, Mattias Ekström and Timo Scheider, no less than three former DTM champions had to park their cars early after collisions. After his successful outing in the Rallycross World Championship, in which Ekström won the finale prior the DTM race, the Swede had hoped for a similarly good result in the DTM race.
After two of this season’s 18 races, Paul Di Resta is leading the drivers’ standings with 37 points from his fellow Mercedes-Benz driver Robert Wickens (26 points) and Edoardo Mortara (25 points). After his second place on Saturday, Wickens finished sixth today. In the manufacturers’ standings, Mercedes-Benz (83 points) is taking over the lead from BMW (72 points) and Audi (47 points).
In total, the DTM season opener at the Hockenheimring attracted 78,500 spectators, an increase of some five percent compared to last year. In summerly conditions, they could enjoy to an entertaining programme with spectacular motorsport and live music acts. The next DTM weekend is scheduled at Spielberg in Austria on 21-22 May.
