Peter Dumbreck drove his AMG Mercedes to victory in the sixth round of the 2001 DTM at EuroSpeedway Lausitz, to claim his first ever DTM win.
After an exciting 23-lap race with several incidents Dumbreck finished 0.664sec ahead of his team mate Bernd Schneider. Mattias Ekstrom (Abt-Audi TT-R) came home third. A crowd of 62,000 attended the event during the weekend.
After claiming his first DTM pole position, Warsteiner AMG Mercedes driver Uwe Alzen won the qualifying race ahead of his team mate Marcel Fassler and Schneider.
Alzen took the lead at the start of the main event while Dumbreck improved from fourth to second with a clever move entering the first corner. On lap 2 Schneider came into the pits for his compulsory tyre change with Dumbreck stopping one lap later.
From the end of the fifth lap until the eighth lap, the safety car was deployed after debris of Alain Menu’s damaged Opel Astra V8 Coupe was scattered across the track. During this period, most of the drivers including Alzen, Fassler and Thomas Jager (Original-Teile AMG Mercedes) pitted.
At the re-start on lap nine, Dumbreck was in the lead and held off all attacks of Schneider until the chequered flag.
“What a fantastic feeling,” Dumbreck said. “This is not only my first DTM win, but also my first victory since F3 win at Macao 1998. I felt a lot of pressure from Bernd so that I had to stay cool and fully concentrated.”
Dumbreck, who improved to second overall in the championship, is the fifth winner in this season’s six races so far after Schneider with two victories, Laurent Aiello (Abt-Audi TT-R), Fassler and Alzen. Also five drivers claimed this year’s pole positions what proved the championship’s high competitiveness with many drivers capable of winning.
