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Paffett wins at Istanbul

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In rainy conditions, 32,000 spectators travelled to the Istanbul Park for DTM’s inaugural Turkish round – and witnessed a remarkable performance of the Mercedes-Benz drivers. On Sunday, Gary Paffett (DaimlerChrysler Bank AMG-Mercedes) secured the win, in his AMG-Mercedes C-Class, followed by his brand-mates Häkkinen and Schneider.

“This was a perfect weekend and a major step on the way to the title,” beamed the winner. At the same time, Mattias Ekström (Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline), the previous championship leader, had to settle for twelfth place in his Audi A4 DTM and left Istanbul empty-handed. The best Opel driver in the penultimate round of the season was Laurent Aiello who took his Opel Vectra GTS V8 to sixth place.

Right at the start of the 32-lap race (170.816 kilometres), Mattias Ekström impressed by a fantastic start. From his fifth grid position, he passed Mercedes-Benz drivers Jamie Green and Bruno Spengler even before the field entered turn one. Yet, this success turned out to be short-lived. At the end of lap one, Ekström and Green battled for third position while approaching the pit-straight, and following a slight contact, Ekström dropped back to sixth position. During his two compulsory stops, the 27-year old Swede lost even more time and he was also hampered by problems on his car. It was the first time since the Donington round back in 2003 that Ekström failed to score points.

At the same time, his rival in the battle for the championship, Gary Paffett, impressed the crowds with a perfect performance, thus living up to his nickname ‘Gary Perfect’. In spite of the rain falling during the first third of the race and the accordingly difficult track conditions, he led from the start to the finish line. With just the season finale at Hockenheim to go, (21st to 23rd October), 24-year old Paffett (78 points) has won five races and holds a nine-point lead over Ekström (69 points), with Tom Kristensen (Audi Sport Team Abt, 51 points) following in third position. Due to this situation, it will be very difficult now for Ekström to defend his title. His only chance to do so would be to win the season finale with Paffett scoring no points at all. The last time the Briton left a DTM round empty-handed was 16 races ago: last year’s EuroSpeedway Lausitz round when he was excluded after the race.

Jean Alesi (AMG-Mercedes), who had to make an additional stop due to a refuelling problem during his first stop, finished seventh, and Bruno Spengler (Junge Gebrauchte von Mercedes) came eighth, thus scoring another point and again turning out to be the best driver of a 2004-spec car.