Nurburgring main: Uwe's perfect day
Mercedes-Benz star Uwe Alzen scored his first DTM victory in almost a year at the Nurburgring today (Sunday) when he beat Abt Audi's series leader Laurent Aiello in the main race. Just like the earlier qualification event, which he also won, it was a close run thing
Alzen made another great start and headed Aiello and his fast-starting team-mate Christian Abt into Turn 1. For the second time today, Jean Alesi's Mercedes was a spinner, but this time he was collected by Alain Menu's Opel, putting both out on the spot. Patrick Huisman was also punted into a spin, thanks to the late-braking Opel of Joachim Winkelhock.
Bernd Schneider was another to lose out at the first bend, dropping places to Abt, Martin Tomczyk (Audi) and Marcel Fassler (Mercedes). Tomczyk had the audacity to lunge past Abt at Turn 1 on the second lap, but ran wide allowing Christian to nip back ahead for third.
That allowed Alzen and Aiello to pull well clear, and they renewed their battle from earlier. They were never closer than when they pitted on lap nine, Laurent almost pushing Uwe down the pit lane. Alzen's stop was much quicker, however, and he gained 1.3secs overall on his French rival.
Aiello didn't take long to catch up again, but Schneider - who had moved back up to third by the conclusion of the pit stops - was blocked by Aiello's team-mate Mattias Ekstrom, who had left his pit stop very late. Once ahead, Schneider closed right up on Aiello, which gave Alzen some respite up front.
Although the trio all threatened to pass each other at some stage, no one actually did so and order remained static until the flag. Alzen won by three-tenths of a second, with Schneider just two-tenths behind the Audi. Fassler wasn't far behind in fourth, with Tomczyk and Opel's Manuel Reuter rounding out the point scorers.
1 Uwe Alzen, AMG Mercedes, 28 laps
2 Laurent Aiello, Abt Audi, +0.3s
3 Bernd Schneider, AMG Mercedes, +0.6s
4 Marcel Fassler, AMG Mercedes, +1.4s
5 Martin Tomczyk, Abt Audi, +6.8s
6 Manuel Reuter, Opel Astra, +9.4s
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