Photo: PSP Images

Mike Rockenfeller takes stunning victory at Brands

Mike Rockenfeller has taken victory from pole at Brands Hatch, making it his first win in two years and four days since his maiden DTM victory at Zandvoort in 2011.

The Phoenix Audi driver led from pole and only lost the lead of the race during the pitstop phase of the race. He finished the last of the 98 laps ahead of BMW’s Bruno Spengler by 7.6 seconds, after the Canadian inherited second from stablemate Augusto Farfus, whose M3 ground to a halt on the Brabham Straight whilst on course for an easy second.

Mercedes’ Robert Wickens started outside of the top 10 and optimised an option-standard-standard strategy to finish a career best fourth on the track, but was promoted to third after stablemate Gary Paffett had five seconds added to his time after failing to slow sufficiently under yellow flags. The Brit will now be classified sixth.

Joey Hand, who started a career best position of third following Martin Tomczyk’s demotion to the back of the grid, suffered a terrible start to drop back to sixth, but come the end of the race had recovered to fifth to score his best ever DTM career result. Mattias Ekstrom was seventh after starting 12th, and headed Mercedes’ Christian Vietoris, Timo Scheider and DTM rookie, Pascal Wehrlein, who rounded out the top-10.

Notable incidents of the race included Roberto Mehri muscling BMW’s Timo Glock onto the grass at Graham Hill in the early stages, despite no contact between the cars. However, the young Spaniard earned himself a drive-through penalty a handful of laps later after spinning Martin Tomczyk out of the race in the same place whilst the pair were fighting over 13th.

Spengler was also lucky to not incur the stewards’ wrath after robustly defending against Paffett going into the Druids hairpin.