Alesi's victory ensured that Mercedes kept a close rein on proceedings, adding to the five previous round victories achieved by Schneider and Albers. Still a British crowd favourite after his year's in
Formula One, Alesi celebrated his lights-to-flag win with doughnuts after the chequered flag. Despite Schneider never falling more than a second behind for the majority of the race, the race had been one of his most memorable, he later revealed.
''It's fantastic to win here again,'' he said of his second
Donington DTM success, ''During the race it was actually better when Bernd was right behind - that way I knew he was having to work his tyres harder!
''Pitting together was also very good, because his pit box was ahead of mine, so I could see exactly where he was and what I had to do. I remember one Italian Grand Prix when
David Coulthard and I pitted in exactly that situation and he went on to win, so that taught me a good lesson.''
Schneider fell away in the closing laps, having used the best of his tyres as Alesi had reasoned, but still left the UK with the championship lead, having overhauled Albers' tenuous advantage.
''I'd have preferred to have won the race obviously,'' he said, ''but it's good to be heading into the last four rounds with the points lead. I want to congratulate Jean on a great race - it was a lot of fun out there.''
Fässler came home fourth ahead of Albers, unable to do anything about Ekstrom's progress, while Thomas Jäger ended up seventh. He was the best of the 2002 car drivers, and scored his first points of the season.
Although Mercedes continued its clean sweep of victories, motorsports boss Norbert Haug doesn't believe that that tells the whole story.
''It's still extremely close, with five or six drivers able to take the title,'' he insisted, ''If you look at this weekend, we had some good luck because, if Mattias Ekström had fulfilled his performance in qualifying and started ahead of us, or if he'd made a better start, I could have seen him winning this race.''
