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Nurburgring DTM: Muller storms to victory and extends points lead

Nico Muller eased to his fifth DTM victory of the 2020 season at the Nurburgring on Sunday, beating title rivals Robin Frijns and Rene Rast to extend his lead in the drivers' standings

At the start of the race, Frijns pulled away cleanly from pole position, with Muller moving up to second after passing the WRT Audi of Ferdinand Habsburg, who had delivered a stellar lap in qualifying to put himself on the front row of the grid.

Rast also managed to clear Habsburg heading into the chicane on the second lap, putting the three championship leaders from the Audi fold at the head of the field.

Frijns was initially able to build an advantage of over one-second on his rivals, but Muller rapidly brought down the deficit to his Abt Audi team-mate to just 0.5s by the end of lap five.

Two laps later, Muller executed a textbook pass on Frijns heading into Turn 1, moving into the lead for the first time in the race.

Frijns subsequently fell into the clutches of Rast, but the Team Rosberg driver was unable to close the gap sufficiently to attempt a move.

With an on-track pass appearing impossible, Rast tried to undercut Frijns by making his stop on lap 13, but that trick failed when Frijns emerged out of the pits two laps later with a healthy two-second gap.

Out in front, Muller extended his lead to over five seconds after the pitstop, laying the foundation for his second victory in four races.

It also marked a reversal of fortunes for the Swiss driver, who finished down in fifth in race one on Saturday after being turned around by Audi stablemate Jamie Green.

Frijns eventually finished 11.790s behind Muller in second, slipping 18 points behind his Abt team-mate in the drivers' standings.

Rast was unable to stay in touch with the leading duo in the second half of the race, eventually crossing the line 19.526s off Muller after 41 laps of racing.

Sheldon van der Linde finished as the top BMW driver in fourth, ahead of Marco Wittmann, who delivered BMW's sole podium of the Nurburgring sprint weekend in race one on Saturday.

Habsburg rapidly slipped down the order in the opening stint, but appeared to be much quicker in the second half of the race, finishing just over a second behind Wittmann in sixth.

Audi driver Mike Rockenfeller was classified seventh after passing the BMW of Timo Glock five laps from the finish.

Loic Duval (Audi) and Jonathan Aberdein (BMW) rounded out the points scorers in ninth and 10th respectively.

Formula 1 convert Robert Kubica suffered heartbreak when he was forced to pull into the ART BMW garage with a gearbox issue while running in a points-scoring position.

The Polish driver had qualified a career-best seventh and had moved up to sixth in the opening stages of the race, although was set to drop down the order after being hit with a five-second penalty for incorrectly lining up on the grid.

DTM Nurburgring sprint race two result - 41 laps

Pos Driver Team Car Gap
1 Nico Muller Abt Audi 57m09.856s
2 Robin Frijns Abt Audi 11.790s
3 Rene Rast Rosberg Audi 19.526s
4 Sheldon van der Linde RBM BMW 22.733s
5 Marco Wittmann RMG BMW 24.016s
6 Ferdinand Habsburg WRT Audi 25.713s
7 Mike Rockenfeller Phoenix Audi 30.162s
8 Timo Glock RMG BMW 33.795s
9 Loic Duval Phoenix Audi 40.763s
10 Jonathan Aberdein RMR BMW 44.264s
11 Harrison Newey WRT Audi 44.645s
12 Philipp Eng RBM BMW 45.058s
13 Lucas Auer RMR BMW 45.523s
14 Fabio Scherer WRT Audi 46.347s
15 Jamie Green Rosberg Audi 6 Laps
- Robert Kubica ART BMW Retirement

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