DTM: Wickens dominates first Zandvoort race

Robert Wickens took a start-to-finish win for Mercedes in the first race of the Zandvoort DTM round. The Canadian withstood early pressure from Marco Wittmann's BMW, and then pulled away as it appeared that most of the BMWs suffered with tire degradation for the rest of the 40-minute race.

The safety car appeared at the end of lap one as the result of a startline incident that ended with Maximilian Gotz and Adrien Tambay being sidelined, and Martin Tomczyk being penalized for being at fault.

Wittmann stayed within a second of Wickens until a virtual safety car was called on lap 10 after Augusto Farfus went off at one of the fast corners around the back of the circuit. After the VSC, Wittmann couldn't switch his tires on and instead came under pressure from the Mercedes of Christian Vietoris.

Vietoris tried many maneuvers on Wittmann until, having used up all his DRS allowance, he moved over with three laps remaining to see whether Mercedes stablemate Gary Paffett – who still had DRS available – might be able to attack the BMW. When Paffett didn't make sufficient inroads, Vietoris was let through again into Tarzanbocht on the final lap to claim his rightful podium place.

"The first task was getting a good start – I got an average one so I was defending early," said Wickens, who won by over seven seconds. "After the slow zone, for some reason I got a lot of grip for a bit and I was able to break the DRS range. Then I got a rhythm and I was able to pull a gap."

Jamie Green was the leading Audi runner in fifth, and had a lonely race once fellow Audi man Edoardo Mortara was called in for a drive-through penalty for carrying too much speed under the VSC. This promoted one of the best battles of the race to a fight for sixth.

Once again it was a BMW at the head of the queue – in this case the car of Antonio Felix da Costa – and he had Audi man Mattias Ekstrom trying to force an opening. Ekstrom in turn had the distraction of Daniel Juncadella's Mercedes behind him, while rookie Esteban Ocon almost latched onto the train. They flashed across the finish line separated by 1.7s, with Juncadella and Ocon finally scoring their first points of 2016, the last two men to get on the scoreboard.

Maxime Martin shadowed Ocon for much of the race, but he was another BMW driver to fall away, finally claiming the last point under pressure from Timo Scheider's Audi.

RACE 1 RESULTS:

Originally on Autosport.com