Rast Leads BMW 1-2 in Nürburgring Race 2

Rene Rast stormed to his second victory of the season in DTM by leading a BMW 1-2 in dominant fashion, while Lucas Auer recaptured the championship lead by finishing third.

Rast took the No. 33 Schubert Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 EVO to victory with a margin of 7.795 seconds over stablemate Marco Wittmann, with Auer completing the podium in his No. 22 Team Landgraf Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

After starting the race in sixth position, Rast made rapid progress in the opening stages and climbed up to third by the end of the opening lap.

He then accelerated past Auer out of Turn 5 before chasing down Ben Doerr, who had scored his maiden pole position on the No. 25 Doerr Motorsport McLaren 720S GT3 Evo.

Before the first pit window opened, Rast overtook Doerr into Turn 1, with the latter dropping out of podium contention soon thereafter due to a slow first stop.

Having remainded out front after making his first stop last, Rast rapidly pulled away from second-placed Auer between the two pitstop windows, opening up a gap of nine seconds before pitting again.

A slow second stop from Auer then left the No. 22 Mercedes-AMG vulnerable to an overcut from Wittmann’s No. 11 BMW, who came home behind Rast to take Schubert Motorsport’s second 1-2 finish of the season.

Notably, the previous such result for the team was also Rast’s most recent series victory, which came during Race 2 at Zandvoort earlier this year.

By finishing third, Auer took back the points lead from Jack Aitken after previously losing it when Aitken won Race 1 on Saturday.

Aitken came away from the second and final race of the weekend without points after he was tagged into a spin by Ricardo Feller’s No. 29 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II. Feller was given a triple penalty lap for the incident.

Maro Engel finished fourth in the No. 24 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG, with Ayhancan Guven completing the top five aboard the No. 90 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R.

Arjun Maini captured sixth for HRT Ford Performance, while Gilles Magnus delivered Comtoyou Racing’s best DTM result to date by coming home seventh in the No. 7 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.

Having started from pole, Doerr came home eighth in the No. 25 McLaren. Jordan Pepper and Thomas Preining rounded out the top ten.

RESULTS: Race 2