René Rast powered to his second victory of the 2018 season at the Nürburgring ahead of BMW's Bruno Spengler and Mercedes' Gary Paffett.
Rast dominated Saturday's opening action to take pole position, the victory and the fastest lap to take the maximum 28 points and move up to fifth in the standings: "I'm really happy today," said Rast. "I never scored full points. To top the result tomorrow will be difficult."
Second-placed Spengler took his first podium of the year and his first since Moscow 2017 but came close to winning after he worked hard in the closing laps to close the gap to the leader, but it wasn't quite enough as he was forced to settle for the runner-up spot.
"It was a great day for us and second place is always good. We've had a lot of bad luck in the past. Today we were consistent from the first to the last lap."
With Paffett finishing on the podium the Mercedes driver moved clear of fellow British driver Paul di Resta to take an eight-point lead into Sunday. Paffett wasn't overly happy with his performance, but on a day when Di Resta failed to score, following a collision with Philipp Eng, he realised the importance of just finishing.
"Of course you always want to get as many points as possible and I was hoping to finish ahead. Nevertheless, these were extremely important points for the drivers' classification."
Paffett came under attack in the closing stage of the race too, forcing him to defend heavily from a quick Timo Glock, who went on to take fourth to cement his position of sixth in the standings.
The second race of the weekend, round 16, takes place on Sunday.
