Jamie Green is the winner of the DTM race at the Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg on Sunday. In extremely difficult weather conditions, the Audi driver kept control, changed to rain tyres at the right time and, in spite of a five seconds’ penalty, drove his first season win home after 32 laps. It is the 14th race win of his DTM career. Second place in an action-packed race went to Mercedes-AMG driver Gary Paffett from reigning DTM champion Marco Wittmann. The BMW driver had started from the penultimate grid position.
Eventual race winner Green took the lead from Timo Glock after an early safety car intervention and the subsequent flying restart on lap three. As he already overtook Glock before the field was released again, Green was given a five seconds’ pit stop penalty that he served during his tyre change on lap 19. The change to rain tyres came at the right time as the rain had increased just a little bit earlier. “With the slick tyres and a little bit of rain, driving was extremely difficult,” the race winner reported. “I slid once, but I was fast enough, so no problem for me there.” Green was another driver to discover how challenging the new radio rules are. Radio communication between pits and driver is banned, apart from safety-related information. “The decision when to change to rain tyres was mine and mine alone to make. The timing was spot-on.”
With a furious comeback, Gary Paffett finished second. After an off-track excursion on lap four, the Mercedes-AMG driver dropped back to 14th place, but successively claimed back one position after another. At the time of his pit stop on lap 18, he was already fifth, made up another three places with rain tyres and finished second. Marco Wittmann, too, came to the fore from 17th place on the grid, was already tenth after the opening lap and sixth after the restart. Eventually, the raining DTM champion also chose the right time to change from slick to rain tyres and was rewarded for his race with third place.
Timo Glock, who had started the race from pole position, missed the restart, unlike Green, and dropped back to fourth. Then, he misjudged his tyre choice, initially opted for another set of slicks, only to have them replaced by rain tyres after all another four laps later. Eventually, he finished eighth. Lucas Auer, the winner of the race on Saturday, had his eyes set on a podium finish for a long time, but eventually dropped back to fourth after changing to rain tyres too late.
In the DTM drivers’ standings, Lucas Auer remains in the lead with 40 points after two of 18 season races. After his victory, Jamie Green has 26 points to his tally and is second in the standings. Tied on points, Gary Paffett is third. Timo Glock is in fourth place with 25 points. The third and fourth DTM race of the season will take place in less than a fortnight, from 19 till 21 May, during the Motorsport Festival at the Lausitzring.
Results: 1 Green 2 Paffett 3 Wittmann 4 Auer 5 Müller 6 Di Resta 7 Rockenfeller 8 Glock 9 Spengler 10 Engel 11 Ekström 12 Blomqvist 13 Mortara 14 Farfus 15 Duval 16 Rast 17 Martin 18 Wickens
