Paffett leads parade to the flag

Gary Paffett has taken his second victory of the season this season during the fifth race at the Motopark Oschersleben. The race itself was far from eventfull, with hardly any overtaking manouvres. Mattias Ekström came in second, keeping the championship lead with only one point advantage over Gary Paffett.

Mattias Ekström was one of the view drivers today who were able to show their overtaking skills. He passed Opel driver Laurent Aiello in a beautiful manouvre, with clean racing from both drivers. Later on Ekström forced Jamie Green to make a mistake, which enabled Ekström to take second from the Brit.

Polesitter Tom Kristensen messed up his start, dropping back from first to 19th place. However, the Dane drove an absolute superb race, fighting his way through the field up to fifth place. At the end of the race he had a hard fight over fourth with Bernd Schneider, but the Mercedes driver managed to keep Kristensen off. Allan McNish finished just behind the two rivals in sixth.

Laurent Aiello had a very good start, going over in fourth spot after the first lap. However, during the race he dropped back to seventh place. He finished one place ahead of his teammate Marcel Fässler. Frentzen and Reuter finished in the back of the field.

Mika Häkkinen and Martin Tomczyk were the only two drivers failing to finish the race. Häkkinen had a huge off, just after a disastrous pitstop, in one of the faster corners of Oschersleben, almost flipping over his car. He lost the bottom of his car, denying him to continue his race. Martin Tomczyk broke his front right suspension after clipping a curb to hard.