"Thanks to our race strategy, good stops and the fast car, I was able to make a quick recovery and, together with ‘Eki', I put pressure on the two leading Mercedes. ‘Eki' really gave everything and I think that, in the end, his brakes weren't the best anymore - on the final four or five laps, one of his wheels kept locking - and, on the last lap, I took advantage of that."
While Scheider thanked Ekstrom for not making life difficult when he went to make his last-ditch move, the Swede confirmed that he had, indeed, been having trouble getting his
Red Bull car slowed down.
"My A4 was great today, so I was able to fight at the front of the field again but, unfortunately I lost my brakes and Timo was able to pass me," he sighed, "Recovering from eighth on the grid to third in the race was a tremendous thing and it's too bad, because I'd have liked to take a trophy home with me."
"We continue leading the championship and clinched a podium result at the Norisring and that – as well as the fact that the new A4 DTM was really very fast in the race and our teams did great work in the pits – is definitely positive," Audi chief Dr Wolfgang Ullrich commented, "It's not hard to imagine, though, what would have been possible if we hadn't lost so much time at the start. But to win, everything's got to fit together."
Tom Kristensen was the only other Audi driver to score points in front of 140,000 spectators at the tough Nuremberg circuit, coming home in seventh place. The Dane had been hard on the heels of the leading Mercedes trio before his A4 lost important aerodynamics components in various tussles. With braking problems also besetting his machine and a cramping leg not helping his performance in the cockpit, Kristensen was pushed back to seventh place.
"This has been one of the races after which you really appreciate a scoop of ice-cream!" the eight-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner claimed, "The car was excellent, and so was the start - in the beginning, I was quicker than the Mercedes in certain sectors, but I wasn't able to put pressure on the cars in front of me there.
![Timo Scheider celebrates victory at Oschersleben [pic credit: Audi Motorsport]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/431157.jpg)
