Wittmann dominates Hockenheim DTM opener

Marco Wittmann took his first DTM race win in dominant style at the season opener at Hockenheim.

The RMG BMW driver did not put a foot wrong all race, barging past polesitter Adrien Tambay's Abt Audi on the second lap of the race, before building a healthy gap on the option tire. He pitted for a set of the standard Hankooks on lap 20, and with the remainder of the rest of the top six also running options in the first stint, and the best of the standard tire starters well back, the race was essentially won.

Wittmann had a 6.3-second gap over Tambay a lap after his stop, and managed to stretch it to 12.8sec at the finish as he recorded his first DTM win.

Behind Wittmann, Ekstrom made the exact opposite strategy work. The Abt Audi driver started from fifth on the standard tire, was ninth when he stopped on lap 22, and the charged home on the option tire to finish second.

He was helped a little bit by early front-runners Timo Scheider and Antonio Felix da Costa clashing nine laps from the end, giving him a clear run at Tambay, as well as Edoardo Mortara, who was on a similar strategy, retiring a lap earlier with a puncture.

Tambay held on to finish third, while 2013 champion Mike Rockenfeller was the best of Phoenix Audis in fourth, using an almost identical strategy to Ekstrom to make a late run to the front.

Timo Glock finished fifth for MTEK BMW, having set up the result with a crucial first lap on the options on which he jumped up four places and most importantly cleared the drivers in front of him starting on the standard tire.

The rest of the top eight was made up by drivers who started on the standard tire – the Schnitzer BMW pair of Bruno Spengler and Martin Tomczyk, and RBM BMW driver Augusto Farfus.

The best of the Mercedes drivers were HWA's Pascal Wehrlein and Gary Paffett, who finished 11th and 12th, respectively, after starting on the standard tire.

Option starters Christian Vietoris and Robert Wickens did manage to charge from the back of the grid into the top 10 in the early stages of the race, but ultimately slipped back to 15th and 18th by the finish.

Originally on Autosport.com