Maxime Martin takes dominant first DTM career win in Moscow
BMW DTM rookie Maxime Martin took a dominant maiden DTM career victory at the Moscow raceway ahead of former DTM champions Bruno Spengler and Mattias Ekström.
The Belgian started on pole and looked unrivalled on the way to his first DTM career victory, which he won by 4.2 seconds ahead of BMW stablemate Spengler.
Spengler also finished from where he started on the grid, while Ekström put in a storming drive to finish third by 0.1s ahead of the BMW M4 DTM of DTM championship leader, Marco Wittmann.
Ex-Formula 1 driver Timo Glock was sixth in his BMW M4 DTM after running as high as third. However, the German was passed by Ekström, Wittmann and Audi DTM rookie, Nico Müller, on lap 44.
The race was also characterised by two Safety Car periods. On lap 23, the Audi of former double DTM champion Timo Scheider rolled to a halt on the start-finish straight, bringing out the safety car until lap 28.
When the Safety Car returned to the pits, a collision between 2013 DTM champion Mike Rockenfeller and Audi stablemate Adrien Tambay saw it brought back out one lap later.
By the time the Safety Car came back to the pits, the both Audis of Tambay and Rockenfeller had retired.
Following the double Safety Car period, it was expected the speed advantage would swing to the drivers who started on softer Hankook tyre.
Among these drivers were the BMW pairing of Augusto Farfus, Antonio Felix da Costa and the Audi of Miguel Molina.
It was expected the softer tyre would provide an advantage of two-seconds per lap and with a clear track, the trio on the softer Hankook tyre would be able to be in contention for a podium position.
However, while Farfus managed to scrape a point in 10th – albeit 21 seconds adrift of Martin – da Costa and Molina had to settle for 11th and 12th respectively.
Positions seven to nine were occupied by Christian Vietoris, the sister Mercedes of Pascal Wehrlein and Edoardo Mortara.
At the start of the race, Mortara suffered contact with Audi stablemate Jamie Green, who eventually retired his Audi RS 5 DTM with suspected suspension damage on lap 6.
Vitaly Petrov finished 18th in front of his home crowd at the Moscow Raceway and was the last of the classified runners.
