Marco Wittmann joins the DTM championship battle, thanks to a perfect race during Race 2 of this weekend in Zandvoort, Netherlands. Wittmann has kept Rockenfeller behind -second, while Loic Duval climbs to the podium for the first time in the DTM.
The race had a slightly different grid than what the results of the classification said, after the incident between Timo Glock and Edoardo Mortara. Glock who had finished fifth, saw how he was relegated to last position.
But BMW would suffer more scary moments before starting the race when Tom Blomqvist lost his car’s door in the warm-up lap. More suffering would arrive at the start of the race watching how Maxime Martin stalled his car at the start, same as Audi’s René Rast, plus a jump start from Bruno Spengler.
In the lead, Marco Wittmann beat Augusto Farfus in the first corner, Jaime Green went up to third position but would lose this with Mike Rockenfeller and Maro Engel, as he went off at turn 10.
When first lap was completed, Augusto Farfus made his mandatory pit-stop but the strategy would not work. BMW driver saw how shortly after his pit-stop, lost positions with Robert Wickens and Jamie Green. These two riders would suffer a contact at turn 12, which would end the aspirations of both drivers to get points.
Meanwhile, Ekström managed to avoid this accident and took the lead of those who had already stopped in the pits, but this strategy was not enough to see how Maro Engel was ahead of him 4 laps later.
But the drama came again, with the pit stop of René Rast who re-joined the track in front of Engel, but both made contact at turn 5, causing punctured tires for both drivers. In addition, Rast with the touch broke the suspension and had to retire from the race, along with Paul Di Resta.
In the middle of the race Marco Wittmann made his pit-stop and would have clean air to keep his rhythm smoothly until the German caught Loïc Duval who had not yet made his pit stop, and allowed Rockenfeller to catch the BMW driver to fight for the victory
But this would not happen, Wittmann secured his first victory of the season by 0.8 seconds of margin over Rockenfeller. Loïc Duval secured the podium after showing a very good pace.
Behind, Mattias Ekström suffered problems with his car but would be lucky enough to be protected by Nico Müller who helped him maintain the fourth position from Gary Paffett pressure.
Completes points positions the BMW drivers Martin, Glock and Farfus, while Green overtook Spengler in the final lap to complete points positions.
With the retirement of Rast, Mattias Ekström goes to the lead of the championship with 125 points, 7 more than Wittmann who goes up to the second position. Rast drops to the third with 11 points away from the leader. However there still 8 drivers with chances of winning the championship.
Results:
1 Wittmann 2 Rockenfeller 3 Duval 4 Ekström 5 Müller 6 Paffett 7 Martin 8 Glock 9 Farfus 10 Green 11 Spengler 12 Engel 13 Mortara 14 Blomqvist 15 Auer 16 Wickens 17 Di Resta 18 Rast