The weather on Saturday at first played a key role at round seven of the most popular international touring car series in Oschersleben.
Thick fog in the morning hindered the planned schedule, with the start of the first DTM race of the weekend pushed from 13.35 hours to 14.55 hours. Timo Glock did not let the erratic weather conditions distract him. The BMW pilot was already the fastest driver in qualifying and underlined his prowess with an emphatic lights-to-flag victory ahead of his brand colleague Bruno Spengler. The Hankook slick demonstrated its usual high performance on the challenging circuit near Magdeburg. Also the rapid rise in the asphalt temperature ensured that the Hankook Slick could work perfectly.
After the fog had lifted at Oschersleben, the sun came out and shone on Timo Glock in particular. With his BMW M4 DTM, the 33 year old proved unbeatable in both qualifying and in the race against the 24-strong field on Saturday. Even two safety car phases couldn’t slow Glock down. Starting from pole position, he held a commanding lead to the finish line and brought home the second victory of his DTM career.
His BMW colleague Bruno Spengler, who had taken up the race from the fifth grid spot, managed to make up valuable places after the start and crossed the finish line after 28 laps in second. With this result, the Canadian is now tied for points with Jamie Green (Audi) in fifth overall and is well and truly back in the fight for the drivers’ classification. António Félix da Costa and Augusto Farfus on third and fourth respectively made the quadruple triumph perfect for BMW on Germany’s northernmost circuit.
Despite grappling with power steering problems, Pascal Wehrlein (Mercedes-Benz) salvaged his fifth place after a brilliant performance and again moved into the lead of the drivers’ standings. After a poor qualifying, the previous points’ leader Mattias Ekström took up the race from the second to last grid spot and failed to earn any points for fourteenth. This relegated the Audi pilot back to second overall. His brand colleague Edoardo Mortara retains third overall in the standings after being forced to park his vehicle in the 22nd lap and yield 19th place.
The best Audi driver was Miguel Molina in ninth, with Daniel Juncadella (Mercedes-Benz) earning one point for tenth place.
“The race tire from Hankook has delivered an impeccable performance. After the safety car phase early on, it understandably took a little time to get it up to the optimal temperature window. But afterwards, the race tire provided good grip and a low level of wear, despite the stresses placed on the structure in particular. BMW proved simply unbeatable today,” said Hankook’s DTM race engineer Thomas Baltes.
Timo Glock (BMW): “We made a big step forward with the car, and I had a good feeling with both sets of tires in qualifying. In the race the Hankook race tyre performed very well over the entire distance. The front right tyre comes under a lot of stress here at Oschersleben, but the rubber proved very consistent right to the flag. Our pace was good and we’re very pleased.”
