DTM season finale: Molina wins race 1, Wittmann vs Mortara for the title
Who will win the DTM championship crown will be known on Sunday, after the last race of the season. The Audi driver Miguel Molina won the penultimate race at Hockenheim, what is his second triumph of the year, while the title contenders Marco Wittmann and Edoardo Mortara finished 2nd and 3rd respectively. Jamie Green is out of the championship battle after he has finished 8th.
As it was expected, BMW and Audi started their battle with an interesting qualifying session in which the Bavarians were more successful. Antonio Felix da Costa won the pole position in front of Miguel Molina in Audi. Championship leader Marco Wittmann started from the 4th place, his main rival Edoardo Mortara was on P8, while Jamie Green was on P14.
MIguel Molina led from the start of race
Molina had the best start and immediately took the lead while Wittmann moved up to the third position while Mortara stayed at P8 but was very nervous. After 10 minutes of racing, da Costa allowed Wittmann to pass by. At that moment he had a trophy in his hands and had just to be calm. He even didn’t look too much interested in attacking Molina who was 3.5s ahead.
BMW cars controlled the race but Audi didn’t want to surrender without a fight. With 16 minutes to go, Mortara overtook Timo Glock for P7 and on the following lap, he overtook Augusto Farfus and his teammate Mike Rockenfeller too. to take P5. The Italian’s flying around the track continued and Tom Blomqvist was his next victim. Mortara now was full of confidence but he still had a lot of work to do.
Marco Wittmann leads by 17 points to Mortara before the last race of the season
In the last 10 minutes or so Audi was in slightly better position after having four cars in top 6. Mortara drove like a mad and with two laps to go he overtook da Costa after risky maneuver and started to chase Wittmann but the gap was too big and Edo had to settle for the 3rd, behind Molina and Wittmann.
Da Costa was 4th at the end, Rockenfeller finished 5th, while the remaining points went to Rene Rast, Timo Glock, Jamie Green, Tom Blomqvist, and Paul Di Resta who was the only Mercedes driver in top 10.
Edoardo Mortara started the race from 8th position
Check full results at our results page
Wittmann leads the standings with 194 while Mortara has 177, so there are many scenarios before the final race of the DTM 2016 season at Hockenheim will go on Sunday, 15:15 CET.
Photo: dtm.com
