Robert Wickens gets to victory again in Norisring

Robert Wickens won a crazy race started under heavy rain. Green and Ekström complete the podium while Vietoris and Molina had to retire. Marco Wittmann was seventh.

The race started under safety car conditions due to heavy rain. The car retired in third lap and competition was restored without standing grid. Just started Green collided to Di Resta and made him to tenth place.

Battles were constant. Daniel Juncadella made a spin while trying the overtake over Miguel Molina, then eighteenth. As the race was wet the rule about pit-stops is not active and drivers are allowed to stop whenever they want. Molina pitted and changed tyres in a try to get a good result with a different strategy.

Paffet’s tyres were starting to suffer. Pascal Wehrlein took profit and got the third position while Vietoris tried the same to do so in lap 34, when Paffett decided to make his pit. Despite the track was drying drivers were still using wet tyres. That situation forced them to change the line to keep the tyres cool.

First driver to use dry tyres was Bruno Spengler in lap fifty. The rule about having to use soft tyres for half the race as a maximum was still active whatever the meteorology conditions are so the Canadian driver would be able to finish the race with that composite. Best lap times were set by Spengler so avalanche to pit-lane became general in three laps time.

With all drivers using dry tyres and the race stabilized while seventeen laps to the end Wickens was leader eighteen seconds away from Vietoris, who overtook Green in the pit-lane. Ekström, Wehrlein, Tambay and Mortara were after them while Wittmann and Molina were tenth and seventeenth respectively.

During the next laps Wittmann was able to escalate two positions and unfortunately Molina had to retire due to failure. As when Formula 3 race this morning race would end by time limit, 75 minutes. When just five minutes were left Vietoris, then second classified, had to stop the car for almost losing one of his rear wheels.

So when Wickens saw the checkered flag in a deserved first position he gave to Mercedes the second victory in the season. The star manufacturer worked really well in Norisring for being a heavy braking circuit, but they could not take profit for different problems and podium was dominated by Audi. On the other hand, Marco Wittmann is still leader in DTM Championship.

Next race will be in Moscow on seventeenth august.

Results: