Victory in the second race of the weekend at Hockenheim for Mattias Ekström in a race in wet conditions and without incidents, the opposite of what we saw yesterday. Mortara was second, and Paffett climbing 20 positions, was third.
The weather still remaining a threat because the sky was very close and could fall a shower at any time. Molina fell on the grid to fifth place because of a penalty he received in yesterday’s race and Auer came out on the lap to arrival on the grid and he could not race.
The lights turned off and Ekström as Wittmann both started very well and Molina lost many positions, the output was fairly clean in the first 2 turns, without touches with serious consequences for any driver and after the parabolic Wittmann took the lead.
Then the use of the DRS on lap 4 was allowed and a festival of overtaking happened in Turn 4 and Ekström regained the lead in the Mercedes corner and tried to open a gap. Behind Da Costa and Molina overtook Wickens and Portuguese became the leader of the large chase group.
In the leading group, Ekström open space, despite of not having the DRS and Tomczyk overtook Rockenfeller in a nice duel. One lap later Mortara overtook Wittmann and would try to chase the Swedish. In the group behind a pitched battle was developed at the same time, in each curve there was a continuous struggle of drivers trying to make progress.
On lap 11 began to fall the first drops and Wittmann went a bit off in Turn 2 and lost another place in favor of Tomczyk and then two laps later the drivers began to get to switch to rain tires in the pit lane, the first were Mortara and Wittmann and a lap later came another group led by Ekström and Tomczyk, who paid dearly for entering later as they lost positions with Mortara and Wittmann.
In the pit-stops nearly collided Blomqvist and Martin prompting the investigation of the maneuver of the Belgian driver which resulted in a drive-through. Whereas in front Ekström was faster than Mortara and was reducing the distance between them until finally on lap 17 Mattias regained again the lead.
Behind the big chase group had dissolved into small factions which had benefited more of the meteorology was Paffett who started on last position, and he was running in seventh position after overtaking Wickens. Behind the Canadian, Farfus was running eighth and in a lap he fell to the fourteenth position.
Ekström opened hole ahead of Mortara, Paffett overtook Spengler with an included coup and in the last positions Müller touched Di Resta and both made spun and because of that incident, the Swiss were sanctioned with a drive-thoug.
On Lap 23 Tomczyk overtook Wittmann and in the same action Paffett overtook Rockenfeller and he stuck to Wittmann and he overtooked him, his next objective was Tomczyk. Another beautiful battle was the one held Spengler and Wickens who were in parallel on the parabolic, wheel to wheel, lap after lap.
Gary Paffett still had a good pace and gradually was chasing Tomczyk and on lap 27 he launched his first attack and in the next lap in a brilliant maneuver his second attack had the desired effect, the English was already third. And behind Wickens finally he managed to overtake Spengler and went for Wittmann and Rockenfeller while Wehrlein was hunting Splengler although there were less than five minutes of the race, but he got it a lap later.
Ahead things were already defined but from the fifth everything was openeded. In the last lap Vietoris beat Scheider and he made a spin.
Victory for Mattias Ekström and he achieves his twentieth victory of his career in the DTM in a race with some tricky conditions, followed by Mortara and tremendous race for Gary Paffett that starting from the 23 position was third. In other battles all was as it was. As for the rookies it has not been a brilliant race for any of them being Götz sixteenth, Blomqvist seventeenth and Auer can not even run.
