Norisring, race 2: Paffett cruises home

Pole man Kousuke Matsuura held off Paffett's charge for the first lap, but could not keep the Englishman at bay when he dived down the inside into T1 to take the lead at the beginning of lap two. From there on Paffett simply drove away from the field.

At one stage he stretched his lead to just under five seconds, which allowed him the luxury of being able to back off and conserve his tyres and lap the backmarkers with a degree of circumspection.

Behind him Frank Diefenbacher pulled a near identical move on Matsuura to take second on lap three, but he could not match the pace of Paffett's Team Rosberg Dallara, and had to settle for second. The result means the German trails Paffett by 16 points in the championship, but with two-thirds of the season still to go it's too early to right off his title chances.

With the leading pair comfortably ahead of the rest, the best battle in the race was for third. Matsuura was never able relax in the final podium spot as he came under intense pressure from first Norbert Siedler and then Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Siedler actually had the nose of his Swiss Racing Team car ahead of the Japanese at one stage, but Matsuura held his nerve and his position. Siedler's challenge ended in unfortunate circumstances, when backmarker Marco Scharf spun on the exit of the chicane right in front of the third place battle.

Matsuura and Siedler did brilliantly to avoid hitting the spinning car, but Siedler had to back off more and this gave Liuzzi the chance to get a run on him. The Italian duly took fourth position, and the fight to Matsuura, but the PREMA driver held on for his second podium of the year.

Siedler's race went from bad to worse in the closing stages as he lost places to Bernhard Auinger and Robert Doornbos in quick succession, and thus finished outside of the points.


Pos Driver Team Time
Gary Paffett Team Rosberg
Frank Diefenbacher Opel Team BSR +2.9s
Kousuke Matsuura PREMA Powerteam +4.8s
Vitantonio Liuzzi Opel Team BSR +5.2s
Bernard Auinger Opel Team BSR +8.7s
Robert Doornbos Team Ghinzani +10.0s