Sunday, June 6, 2010

DTM: Audi's Rockenfeller finishes fourth behind Mercedes 1-2-3 at Lausitz

. Sunday, June 6, 2010

With a fourth place finish, Mike Rockenfeller was the top Audi driver at today's DTM race at the EuroSpeedway in Lausitz. Despite a strong practice and qualifying, today's race proved difficult for the four-rings. As the checkered flag waved, it was Spengler, Di Resta, and Green taking a 1-2-3 victory for Mercedes.

"Mike (Rockenfeller) showed a great performance in the 2008-spec car, he was very strong here throughout the weekend,” commented Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. "But that is only small consolation for the fact that we lost our best-placed cars in the championship as a result of a brand-internal collision on the first lap – that’s a nightmare which mustn’t happen.”

The "brand-internal collision" Dr. Ullrich spoke of was sparked on the first lap when Alexandre Prémat hit the rear of Mattias Ekström's Red Bull A4 DTM, sending the Swede into a spin. Unfortunately chaos then ensued, as David Coulthard (Mercedes), unabled to avoid the collision, was the next car involved also hitting Ekström. Timo Scheider, Martin Tomczyk, Oliver Jarvis and Miguel Molina all sustained damage from the resulting chain reaction of Prémat's admitted mistake.

In all, both Prémat and Ekström were out of the race following the collision. Coulthard managed to get back on track but eventually retired by the seventh lap. Scheider was sent to the 15th position, ultimately fighting back into the points with an 8th place finish. Tomczyk also recovered to a sixth place finish, earning his first points of the season. Rounding out the top-ten was Markus Winkelhock with a strong performance from a 15th position start.

The DTM season will continue at the Norisring in Nuremberg on July 4th. Until then, be sure to stay tuned to quattroholic.com for all the Audi Motorsport action at the 24 hours of Le Mans next weekend.

Written/compiled by quattroholic.com
Source: Audi Motorsport