Having taken his second straight pole earlier on Sunday, Rast had a superb start to lead the race.

BMW's Marco Wittmann, on the other hand, had a sluggish getaway from second, allowing Audi driver Nico Muller to get past.

The trio was initially followed by Mattias Ekstrom, but the Swede pitted on Lap 3, using a similar strategy he had used at Lausitzring where he pitted on the first lap and finished second from eighth on the grid in the Sunday race.

With the top three all waiting to change their tyres until more than five laps later, Ekstrom emerged ahead when all the pitstops panned out.

Moreover, Muller and Wittmann also fell behind BMW's Maxime Martin, the Belgian driver making his mandatory stop at the end of the opening lap, and running third despite having started the race from last place.

Rast spent most of the race shadowing Ekstrom, and he finally made a move with just a handful of minutes to go, going past his Audi stablemate at the first turn.

He couldn't increase the gap afterwards but it was Rast crossing the finish line first, closely followed by Ekstrom, with Martin keeping Muller at bay and denying Audi a 1-2-3.

Jamie Green made two great moves on Paul di Resta and Wittmann for fifth, as the latter's car failed when running sixth with two laps to go.

That promoted the lead Mercedes of Di Resta into sixth, the Scotsman followed by Timo Glock and Robert Wickens.

The top 10 was completed by Gary Paffett and Mike Rockenfeller, the latter losing his fifth place on the grid after having to start from the pitlane, but benefitting from a first-lap pitstop.

Rockenfeller put Paffett under pressure in the end, but his attempt to overtake resulted in him forcing the Briton off track, for which he is under investigation.

Apart from Wittmann, Lucas Auer was the only other driver not to finish the race, the erstwhile points leader dropping out of contention with a poor stop and then retiring in the pits.

Race results:

Pos.	Driver	Car	Time/Gap
1	René Rast	Audi RS5 DTM	58'01.592
2	Mattias Ekström	Audi RS5 DTM	1.041
3	Maxime Martin	BMW M4 DTM	1.506
4	Nico Müller	Audi RS5 DTM	1.861
5	Jamie Green	Audi RS5 DTM	5.772
6	Paul di Resta	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	7.884
7	Timo Glock	BMW M4 DTM	8.694
8	Robert Wickens	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	11.999
9	Gary Paffett	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	12.653
10	Mike Rockenfeller	Audi RS5 DTM	13.159
11	Edoardo Mortara	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	13.630
12	Augusto Farfus	BMW M4 DTM	15.087
13	Tom Blomqvist	BMW M4 DTM	16.289
14	Bruno Spengler	BMW M4 DTM	17.583
15	Maro Engel	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	19.828
16	Loic Duval	Audi RS5 DTM	38.535
17	Marco Wittmann	BMW M4 DTM	2 laps
Ret	Lucas Auer	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	12 laps