Mercedes driver Paul Di Resta surprisingly won the Saturday race in DTM at the Hungaroring.
Audi had totally dominated qualifying with Rene Rast on Pole Position ahead of Jamie Green, Mattias Ekström, Nico Müller and Mike Rockenfeller. Only Loic Duval couldn’t follow his teammates and “only” qualified seventh.
In fact, we had to go all the way down to fourth position to find the best Audi in the race result with Mike Rockenfeller, where Timo Glock and Bruno Spengler also sneaked by. They had just like the winning Di Resta held an early pit stop, so when Maxime Martin had to park his BMW M4 DTM only 8 laps into the race, after contact with Tom Blomqvist, they had the upper hand on the rest of the field.
Rockenfeller, however, did put pressure on Spengler all the way to the flag, and finished only 0,4 seconds behind the Canadian.
After the race we had quite a big debate about Maxime Martin and his parking of the car. He had parked it in the middle of the track, the lap after Timo Glock had completed his pit stop. So there was was some mumbling in the paddock that it was deliberate parking, only to get the Safety Car on the track, and get Glock forward in the field, from the 14th starting position for the German. No matter if it was deliberate or co-incidence, Glock was catapulted all the way up to finishing second in the race.
There was more drama with Jamie Green getting disqualified from the race following a protest from Mercedes, regarding some illegal covering up on the front of his car. Audi chose not to appeal.
Race 2 will be run tomorrow, Sunday.