Schneider wasn’t too perturbed with his second place effort after narrowly avoiding the opening lap accident between front row man Jean Alesi and Audi’s Christian Abt, which sent both cars spinning hard into the inside barrier on the downhill stretch following turn one and also eliminated Opel contenders Peter Dumbreck and Timo Scheider. With two rounds remaining this year, the former Zakspeed and Arrows
Formula One pilot extends his points advantage over third place finisher Albers to three points, Fassler promoting himself to third a total of nine markers adrift with 20 left in play.
After challenging Fassler for the lead in the first few laps following the safety car, which came out while Alesi’s smashed Mercedes was removed from the centre of the track, Albers disappointingly faded away in the second half of the race and finished almost six seconds behind the two leaders.
The Dutchman was still comfortably clear of the first non-Mercedes mounted finisher, 2002 Champ Laurent Aiello, who overcame a damaged right rear corner during the opening lap melee to comfortably out-race his nearest inter-marque challenger, Mattias Ekstrom.
The two TT-R’s battled hard for fourth place in the early stages with Ekstrom gaining the upper hand initially only to drop behind the multiple Super Touring Champion coming out of turn two on lap 16.
Fassler aside, Gary Paffett was undoubtedly the star of the race as he confidently led laps 12-20 in his year old Mercedes, his Service 24 team successfully employing a late pit stop strategy that resulted in the young Englishman scoring the best result of his DTM career to date with a sixth place effort.
Alain Menu’s Opel Team Holzer outfit took the opposite direction in strategy, bring their man in a soon as they could on both occasions and the former British Touring Car Champion responded by scoring his first points since the EuroSpeedway. Martin Tomczyk chased Menu hard in the closing stages and rounded out the scorers in eighth position.
