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Brands Hatch DTM: Rast 'upset' by Wehrlein's behaviour in race two

Reigning DTM champion Rene Rast says he was "upset" by Pascal Wehrlein's driving while they battled for third early in Sunday's second Brands Hatch race

Audi driver Rast took his second podium finish in three races at Brands Hatch, following his first win of 2018 at Zandvoort, finishing third behind Mercedes pair Paul di Resta and Gary Paffett.

Rast had earlier been forced off the road twice by Wehrlein at Druids - once on the first lap and again after a safety car restart on lap four.

Ex-Formula 1 driver Wehrlein escaped a penalty and finished fourth behind Rast, who jumped the Mercedes driver by stopping later.

"It happened twice actually," Rast told Autosport. "We have the rule in DTM that whenever there is a car next to you on-track you have to leave them room to survive on-track.

"After the start on the first lap he pushed me off exiting Turn 2 [Druids], I hoped he would recognise it and learn from it.

"[But] then after the safety car restart there was the same situation again.

"I was again on his outside and he didn't leave me any room - he just ran me off the track, which is obviously not what we discussed and agreed to in the drivers' briefing.

"I'm a bit upset with that behaviour, I think I'll have to talk to him in the future. This kind of behaviour we should avoid."

Rast reeled in the leaders in the final laps and was only 1.376 seconds shy of winner di Resta at the finish, but said the Wehrlein incident "didn't really change the race result".

Wehrlein said he was simply trying to "defend my position with everything I had" from Rast, revealing he picked up damage in the fight.

"I damaged my car a bit as we had contact twice," said Wehrlein.

"I paid the price for it because my car was damaged and then we decided to pit very early [on lap five of 40].

"We lost a lot of time with cold tyres and Rast stopped one or two laps later so we lost that position.

"When Rast came out in front of me, it's so hard to overtake here but I tried for three laps to push really hard to overtake.

"But when I saw that this doesn't work, I just drove it home because I saw [Loic] Duval had a tyre failure, so [if] you stopped so early then you're not far off it."

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