Mortara wins Saturday race – battle for the title remains open

Mortara gets the jump at the start
Mortara gets the jump at the start

The battle for the title in the 2016 DTM season remains exciting: with a dominant victory in the 15th race of the season, Edoardo Mortara kept all his chances alive behind the wheel of his Audi RS 5 DTM and considerably reduced the gap to points' leader Marco Wittmann. After 26 laps of the Hungaroring, Mortara crossed the finish line as the race winner from his fellow Audi drivers Jamie Green and Miguel Molina. In the following positions, Rockenfeller, Muller and Tambay completed the sextuple victory for Audi.

"Of course, we are super happy with this result and I hope to be able to win the race on Sunday as well," Mortara said. In Hungary, he scored his fourth win of the season and the seventh race victory of his DTM career. Marco Wittmann finished seventh with his BMW M4 DTM from the best-placed Mercedes-AMG driver, Felix Rosenqvist in eighth. Roberto Wickens, who had started the race from 17th place on the grid, was classified tenth behind Timo Scheider.

After 15 of this season's 18 races, Marco Wittmann is leading the drivers' standings with 176 points. Mortara has reduced the gap to the BMW driver, he is now only 14 points down with 162 points in second place.

Jamie Green (137 points) has moved up to third place in the drivers' standings after his second-place finish in the race. Robert Wickens is fourth with 121 points.

"An awesome day – that's what you'd have to call it," said Dieter Gass, Head of DTM at Audi Sport following Audi's one-two-three-four-five-six result. “We had a really perfect qualifying and a very, very, very good race. When you're on the front of the grid with eight cars it's an illusion to believe that you're going to finish with all eight of them in front as well. But we did it with six of them and that's fantastic. We're back in the championship race. And I believe we delivered a good show to the fans and our colleagues from GyÅ'r."

In race two on Sunday (start at 15:10, live coverage on "Das Erste" beginning at 15:00 CEST), Edoardo Mortara will have the chance of recapturing the lead of the standings and to secure a perfect starting base for the finale at Hockenheim. In the manufacturers' standings, Audi, following Saturday's race, is leading with 554 points, trailed by BMW (527) and Mercedes-Benz (434). In the teams' classification, Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline has a ten-point advantage over BMW Team RMG.

Results

POS DRIVER TEAM CAR LAPS GAP
1 Edoardo Mortara Abt Audi 26 42m20.736s
2 Jamie Green Rosberg Audi 26 1.090s
3 Miguel Molina Abt Audi 26 9.240s
4 Mike Rockenfeller Phoenix Audi 26 10.602s
5 Nico Muller Abt Audi 26 11.535s
6 Adrien Tambay Rosberg Audi 26 21.045s
7 Marco Wittmann RMG BMW 26 23.177s
8 Felix Rosenqvist ART Mercedes 26 24.729s
9 Timo Scheider Phoenix Audi 26 25.754s
10 Robert Wickens HWA Mercedes 26 26.916s
11 Daniel Juncadella HWA Mercedes 26 29.399s
12 Maxime Martin RBM BMW 26 32.843s
13 Timo Glock RMG BMW 26 34.316s
14 Bruno Spengler MTEK BMW 26 36.197s
15 Lucas Auer Mucke Mercedes 26 37.259s
16 Antonio Felix da Costa Schnitzer BMW 26 44.405s
17 Christian Vietoris Mucke Mercedes 26 45.334s
18 Mattias Ekstrom Abt Audi 26 50.675s
19 Augusto Farfus MTEK BMW 26 53.287s
20 Gary Paffett ART Mercedes 26 54.002s
21 Maximilian Gotz HWA Mercedes 26 55.420s
22 Tom Blomqvist RBM BMW 26 1m03.546s
23 Martin Tomczyk Schnitzer BMW 26 1m24.939s
Paul Di Resta HWA Mercedes 11 Retirement