Timo Glock won the second DTM race of the weekend at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday. The BMW driver took the lead on lap two and never looked back, completing a comfortable win to claim his third victory in what is probably the most popular international touring car series. Glock was followed home in second place by Mattias Ekström in his Audi RS5 DTM, and fellow Audi driver Jamie Green in third. As in Saturday’s opening race, the race tyres of exclusive DTM Partner Hankook provided outstanding overall performance, offering all the drivers consistently high grip levels right through to the finish.
Jamie Green started Sunday’s race in Spielberg from pole position in glorious sunshine. However, the Audi driver was only able to hang on to the lead until lap two, when he was overtaken by Timo Glock. The BMW driver soon opened a significant gap, which he managed comfortably before taking the chequered flag after 42 laps of racing. Victory catapults the 34-year-old into third place overall in the DTM standings.
Behind Glock, Mattias Ekström finished runner-up having started from eleventh on the grid. The Audi driver stayed out until the 28th lap before coming in for his mandatory pit stop. Shortly after, he was able to pass fellow Audi man Jamie Green, who came home third to score his first points of the 2016 DTM season.
Edoardo Mortara (Audi), who lies second in the overall standings, crashed out on lap 25 after contact with António Félix da Costa (BMW). One beneficiary was Mercedes-Benz driver Paul di Resta, who finished outside the points in 15th, but was still able to hang on to his lead in the Drivers’ Championship. The best-placed driver for the Stuttgart-based car maker was Daniel Juncadella in twelfth place.
Thomas Baltes, Hankook DTM race engineer: “We had a track temperature of 52 degrees, which was ten degrees hotter than on Saturday. Despite this, the Hankook race tyres performed strongly for all three manufacturers. The fact that the Ventus Race showed no signs of wear on the new asphalt in Spielberg made top times and overtaking manoeuvres possible right through to the end of the race.”
BMW Team MTEK completed the fastest pit stop at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, in a time of 26.787 seconds. They are rewarded for their efforts with 25 points towards the Hankook Best Pit Stop Award. The victorious crew will also receive three crates of beer at the coming race weekend at the Lausitzring. Come the end of the season, the exclusive tyre partner of the DTM will present the highest-scoring – and thus the fastest – team with a trophy, which has become very coveted over the years.
Timo Glock (BMW): “The performance of the Hankook race tyre was outstanding. Seldom have we had a racetrack with so few bumps in the DTM, and we were able to set a consistently quick pace with the Hankook slick from the start to the finish of the race. Tyre management was really easy.”
Mattias Ekström (Audi): “I would like to thank my team for the great work. I am really happy with the Hankook race tyre. I had an extremely large amount of grip the whole time, but when I re-joined the race after the tyre change, the grip actually increased. This allowed me to overtake Jamie. Everything worked superbly.”
Jamie Green (Audi): “It was a bit tricky with the new surface and very high temperatures here in Spielberg. I was a little concerned, but the Hankook race tyre worked well, allowing me to claim a podium and score my first points of the season.”
