Paul di Resta needed a victory to keep his DTM (Deutsche Tourenwagen
Masters) championship hopes alive, and it's the first-place trophy that
he will be taking home from today's race at the Circuit de Catalunya,
near Barcelona.
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Paul di Resta, Team HWA AMG Mercedes, AMG Mercedes C-Klasse. Photo by xpb.cc.
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"I probably had the fastest car in the field," di Resta reflected. "It
was (part of) my goal to avoid too many risks as I didn't want to drop
back in the points' standings."
di Resta started his Mercedes C-class from the second row, behind
teammate Bernd Schneider and the championship leader, Audi's Scheider.
The two title chase rivals took the lead from the start, dropping
Schneider to third before the first corner, and the fight was on from
there.
"Unfortunately, I had wheelspin at the start," Schneider rued his start.
"I really had to battle for third place in the first corner."
In the lead, Scheider made his Audi A4 look as wide as the rules would
allow, and while di Resta could hound him, he was unable to make his way
past. Through the first pit stops, the gap never grew to a full second.
"I was having a great fight with Timo (Scheider)," di Resta recounted.
"At some parts of the circuit, he was faster, but at other parts, I was.
The overtaking manoeuvre was absolutely clean and Timo played along
perfectly. I knew that I would have to be very close to him all the time
in order to being able to start an attack at all."
With Mattias Ekstrom choosing a different strategy, he took the lead
after the the leaders made their first stops on lap 15, with Scheider
and di Resta slotting in behind him. On the second stint, though, di
Resta had the measure of Scheider, the young Scot making his move stick
with a pass into the La Caixa turn at the end of the back straightaway.
And that was it for Scheider: the German could do nothing but watch di
Resta's taillights disappear into the distance, as his rival stretched
out his lead, eventually getting the gap up to about five seconds, and
4.531 seconds at the finish.
"I am not at all disappointed with second place," said the Scheider
after his second-place finish. "My start was good and I was able to
overtake Schneider before the first corner. After that, di Resta put me
under quite some pressure. He was a little bit faster and made good use
of a slight gap. Being on the podium today was our goal!"
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Start: Timo Scheider, Audi Sport Team Abt, Audi A4 DTM and Paul di Resta, Team HWA AMG Mercedes, AMG Mercedes C-Klasse battle for the lead. Photo by xpb.cc.
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The gap between Scheider and di Resta shrank down by two points with
today's race, and there are now seven points separating the two, with
two races remaining. Scheider needs a second and a third place to
guarantee the championship, were di Resta to win the last two remaining
races -- a tough task in itself, with DTM adding another 5 kg of weight
to the winning car after each race.
Meanwhile, Paul Green and Stefan Ekstrom are now effective out of the
hunt; the two tangled hard and repeatedly on the final lap in their
struggle for fifth place, and the end result was that Ekstrom received a
50-second penalty in lieu of a drive-through one.
After Audi protested the penalty, the stewards upped it to a
disqualification, and assigned a 30-second penalty to Green as well,
dropping him to eighth place. Green and Ekstrom are now 16 and 18 points
behind Scheider, a daunting task given the German's consistency in
scoring points this season.
Outside the championship fight, Schneider drove a steady, quiet race
to finish third, moving up the field toward the end of the race. 7.2
seconds separated Scheider and Schneider at the finish.
"I couldn't really keep up with di Resta and Scheider out in front," the
Mecedes-Benz veteran admitted. "I had hoped to be able to fight with
Timo for second place. But unfortunately, we had a slight problem during
the pit stop which cost us some time. After that, I could work with my
tyres quite well and I was running pretty much on my own. For a man of
my age, it is quite comfortable not having somebody right behind me all
the time."
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Bernd Schneider, Team HWA AMG Mercedes, AMG Mercedes C-Klasse. Photo by xpb.cc.
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Martin Tomczyk took fourth for Audi, 4.2 seconds adrift of Schneider,
followed by the 2007-spec Audis of Mike Rockenfeller and Alexandre
Premat.
After Tom Kristensen's grid penalty and Ralf Schumacher's fines for
pit lane violations in qualifying, the stewards were kept busy in the
race as well. Apart from Ekstrom's and Green's last-lap antics, Susie
Stoddart, Katherine Legge and Oliver Jarvis were all penalized. Gary
Paffett, who finished 11th, raced under appeal after being initially
excluded for a parc ferme violation.
