Rene Rast has won the Saturday DTM race at the Nürburgring, while his title rival Nico Müller had a disastrous race that saw the Swiss driver finish in last place.
Müller was penalized for an obvious jump start at the beginning of the race, dropping the title hopeful to the back of the grid, a setback he would not recover from. Even a bold strategy choice to pit early in the hopes of a safety car did not pay off, as the race was green from start to finish.
As a result, Müller's tyres could not last the race distance, forcing him to make a second stop on lap 30 after being passed by some of the midfield drivers he had managed to pass with his early stop. He even got a black and white flag for forcing R-Motorsport's Paul di Resta off track.
Rast profited as best he possibly could from his rival's misfortunes, taking the race victory and significantly extending his championship lead. The 2017 champion is now in a position to become the 2019 DTM champion in tomorrow's race at the same track.
With Müller out of the way, Rast put in a performance like we've multiple times before this season, dominating from lights to flag to take a commanding victory. Bruno Spengler, who had started in second, finished in the same manner. The podium was completed by Marco Wittmann, who completed a remarkable comeback from eleventh of the grid.
Jonathan Aberdein also put in a strong performance. The South African rookie started fifth and did battle with the likes of Jamie Green, Sheldon van der Linde and Loic Duval to finish fourth. Duval came fifth, ahead of Green and Van der Linde in sixth and seventh. The top ten was completed by Joel Eriksson, Timo Glock and Robin Frijns.
Mike Rockenfeller was running for the podium for a significant portion of the race, until an engine failure left his Audi RS5 DTM leaking fluids on lap 25, and he was forced to park his car. The German was joined in retirement by Jake Dennis, who had to start from the pit lane after being disqualified from qualifying.
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