» DTM Lausitz: Back-to-back wins for Tomczyk

Martin Tomczyk has proved that his win two weeks ago in Austria was no fluke, with the German taking his second win – and the Drivers’ Championship lead – at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz today.

Tomczyk had ended an 11-year winless run for Phoenix Racing with his win at the Red Bull Ring just two weeks before, and he produced another outstanding drive in his older-spec Audi to win here. It was Audi’s first win at Lausitz since 2006.

With overtaking not always the easiest prospect at the EuroSpeedway, pit strategy was to play an important role in determining the outcome of the race, and drivers ran a host of different strategies with the pit window for the two compulsory pit stops being between laps 11 and 39.

But Tomczyk also showed that a little bit of on-track aggression would work wonders as well. He passed second-placed Jamie Green’s HWA Mercedes on the third lap, and then set about trimming the gap to race leader and pole-sitter Bruno Spengler.

When Spengler peeled into the pits for his first stop, Tomczyk ran two laps longer before pitting himself. These two laps and a quicker pit stop proved enough to get him out ahead of the Canadian.

Another driver to make the strategy work in his favour was Timo Scheider. After being quickest in the morning warm-up, Scheider elected to run a 30-lap opening stint after running seventh in the early stages, before pitting on the last lap of the pit window to vault into second place. It was his best finish of the season to-date.

Spengler finished in third place, one spot ahead of HWA team-mate Gary Paffett and Abt Audi driver Oliver Jarvis.

Green, meanwhile, steadily fell down the order as his decision to run a long middle stint failed to pay off, dropping from fourth to seventh. This became sixth when Miguel Molina – on course for his best finish – retired late in the race after a trip over the kerbs.

Audi stand-in Tom Kristensen finished in seventh place, while DTM rookie Filipe Albuquerque finished in eighth to take the final championship point and his best-ever finish in the DTM series.

Christian Vietoris and Maro Engel rounded out the top-ten in their older-spec Audis, while Mattias Ekström had another fraught race en route to finishing eleventh. The Swede lost a bundle of places in the opening stint of the race, and then compounded issues when he left his pit bay with his fuel can still attached. Fortunately he avoided a penalty as the can fell off while he was still in the pit lane.

Ralf Schumacher – in spite of being one of the quickest men on the track during the race – found his 17th-placed grid slot too hard to overcome, and he finished no better than 12th.

Susie Stoddart failed to make the start when her car failed before the warm-up lap got underway, while Edoardo Mortara also joined her on the sidelines with his Audi damaged after contact with Engel and Vietoris.

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2011 DTM Race of Lausitz Final Classification (52 laps):

	Driver	Entrant / Car	Result
1.	Martin Tomczyk	Phoenix Audi A4 DTM 2008	1:10:52.902
2.	Timo Scheider	Abt Audi A4 DTM 2009	+ 5.436
3.	Bruno Spengler	HWA Mercedes C-Class 2009	+ 14.300
4.	Gary Paffett	HWA Mercedes C-Class 2009	+ 17.604
5.	Oliver Jarvis	Abt Audi A4 DTM 2009	+ 18.633
6.	Jamie Green	HWA Mercedes C-Class 2009	+ 19.397
7.	Tom Kristensen	Abt Audi A4 DTM 2009	+ 23.259
8.	Filipe Albuquerque	Rosberg Audi A4 DTM 2008	+ 24.956
9.	Christian Vietoris	Persson Mercedes C-Class 2008	+ 25.846
10.	Maro Engel	Mücke Mercedes C-Class 2008	+ 26.674
11.	Mattias Ekström	Abt Audi A4 DTM 2009	+ 29.182
12.	Ralf Schumacher	HWA Mercedes C-Class 2009	+ 31.737
13.	David Coulthard	Mücke Mercedes C-Class 2008	+ 44.504
14.	Renger can der Zande	Persson Mercedes C-Class 2008	+ 46.956
15.	Rahel Frey	Phoenix Audi A4 DTM 2008	+ 59.739

	NOT CLASSIFIED
DNF.	Miguel Molina	Abt Audi A4 DTM 2008	42 laps
DNF.	Edoardo Mortara	Rosberg Audi A4 DTM 2008	35 laps
DNS.	Susie Stoddart	Persson Mercedes C-Class 2008	did not start