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Hungaroring DTM: Audi's Rene Rast takes maiden win for points lead

Rene Rast's maiden victory in the DTM finale at the Hungaroring sent the Audi driver to the top of the drivers' championship by a single point

Having taken his second straight pole earlier on Sunday, Rast had a superb start to lead the race.

BMW's Marco Wittmann, on the other hand, had a sluggish getaway from second, allowing Audi driver Nico Muller to get past into second.

While the top three initially ran untroubled, a clever strategy from Mattias Ekstrom meant he threw himself into race-winning contention.

Stopping a early as lap three, Ekstrom adopted a similar strategy to his attempt in the Lausitzring's Sunday race - where he had pitted on the first lap to rise from eighth to second.

Again it proved to be a successful strategy, coming out to lead the race as the leading trio of Rast, Muller and Wittmann stopped more than five laps later to change tyres.

Ekstrom was not the only driver to successfully pull off an early stop. BMW's Maxime Martin stopped two laps earlier than the new leader, and was able to jump Muller and Martin to run third having started the race in last place.

From then on Rast spent most of the race shadowing Ekstrom, and he finally made a move with just a handful of minutes to go, going past his Audi stablemate at the first corner.

He couldn't increase the gap afterwards but Rast held on to win, closely followed by Ekstrom.

There was almost an Audi 1-2-3 but Martin was able to keep Muller at bay to deny the weekend's most impressive marque a memorable end.

Muller was consigned to fourth place ahead of Jamie Green, who made two great moves on Paul di Resta and Wittmann for fifth, as the latter's car failed while running sixth with two laps to go.

That promoted the lead Mercedes of Di Resta into sixth, the Mercedes driver followed by Timo Glock and Robert Wickens.

The top 10 was completed by Gary Paffett and Mike Rockenfeller, the latter losing his fifth place on the grid after having to start from the pitlane but making ground up from a first-lap pitstop.

Rockenfeller put Paffett under pressure in the end, but his attempt to overtake resulted in him forcing the Mercedes driver off track, for which he is under investigation.

Apart from Wittmann, Lucas Auer was the only other driver not to finish the race, the erstwhile points leader dropping out of contention with a poor stop and then retiring in the pits.

RESULTS - 35 LAPS:

Pos Driver Team Car Time Gap
1 Rene Rast Rosberg Audi 58m01.592s -
2 Mattias Ekstrom Abt Audi 58m02.633s 1.041s
3 Maxime Martin RBM BMW 58m03.098s 1.506s
4 Nico Muller Abt Audi 58m03.453s 1.861s
5 Jamie Green Rosberg Audi 58m07.364s 5.772s
6 Paul Di Resta HWA Mercedes 58m09.476s 7.884s
7 Timo Glock RMR BMW 58m10.286s 8.694s
8 Robert Wickens HWA Mercedes 58m13.591s 11.999s
9 Gary Paffett HWA Mercedes 58m14.245s 12.653s
10 Mike Rockenfeller Phoenix Audi 58m14.751s 13.159s
11 Edoardo Mortara HWA Mercedes 58m15.222s 13.630s
12 Augusto Farfus RMG BMW 58m16.679s 15.087s
13 Tom Blomqvist RMR BMW 58m17.881s 16.289s
14 Bruno Spengler RBM BMW 58m19.175s 17.583s
15 Maro Engel HWA Mercedes 58m21.420s 19.828s
16 Loic Duval Phoenix Audi 58m40.127s 38.535s
17 Marco Wittmann RMG BMW 54m47.923s 2 Laps
- Lucas Auer HWA Mercedes 38m48.437s Retirement


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