Maiden DTM victory for Rene Rast

Rene Rast scored his maiden victory in the DTM. The Audi driver triumphed in the Race 2 at Hungaroring and at the same time took the lead in the overall standings from Lucas Auer who had a disastrous weekend in Hungary as he retired from the Race 2 and finished 13th on Saturday.

Rast for the second race in a row won the pole position. Just like on Saturday, Audi was dominant during qualifying after Mattias Ekstrom, Mike Rockenfeller, Nico Muller and Jamie Green started from positions 3 to 6. The only who was able to separate the Ingolstadters was the reigning champion Marco Wittmann who started from P2 while the championship leader Lucas Auer in 7th place was the fastest of Mercedes drivers. Unfortunately, Rockenfeller had to start from the back of the grid after having troubles with his car.

Mattias Ekstrom , Audi, Hungaroring, 2017 DTM

Muller had a flying start as he moved up to the 2nd position and Audi still was in an excellent situation, having four cars in top 5. Unlike in the Race 1, more drivers decided to pit earlier but leader Rast wasn’t among them. However, when he completed a mandatory pit stop, he returned to the track in the provisional 2nd place, behind Ekstrom. At that point, the only who still had to pit was the race leader Maro Engel. Finally, after the Mercedes driver also completed a pit stop, he returned to the back of the grid.

Maxime Martin finished 3rd in the Race 2 at Hungaroring

After 20 laps, Ekstrom’s advantage to Rast was 0.8s while BMW’s Maxime Martin in the 3rd was 2.9s behind the two Audi cars. With five minutes to go, Rast took the lead from the former champion while Green did well and progressed from the 7th to the 5th position. At the end, Rast was just 1.04s ahead of Ekstrom while Martin finished 3rd and prevented 1-2-3 finish for Audi.

Check the full results at SnapLap results page

The next round of the DTM will be held at Norisring, July 1-2.

Photo: dtm.com