Rast denies Ekstrom title at the last
RENE RAST BECAME A SURPRISED, deserving and elated rookie DTM champion for Audi last Sunday. But the back story was of a title that Mattias Ekstrom fumbled at the last, and that Jamie Green, and perhaps even Marco Wittmann, should have won.
That’s not to suggest that Rast should not be feted for the stunning job he’s done since joining the Team Rosberg line-up this season alongside Green. He had to overcome a points deficit to veteran Ekstrom, and did so in style by finishing a charging second to Wittmann in the finale.
Green had taken a stunning win in Saturday’s opener, emerging from a harsh battle with early leader Timo Glock. As they battled on the sixth lap, contact sent Glock wide exiting the Mercedes Arena, but the ex-formula 1 driver swung back onto the track still in the lead. Harshly, Green was reprimanded for this, and as it was his fifth such warning of 2017 he was given a draconian 10-place grid penalty for the finale. So, although he got past Glock on the following lap and pulled away to win, narrowing the points gap to Ekstrom to nine, his task would be tough.
Ekstrom himself struggled with qualifying pace all weekend and this left him to fight to 11th position – out of the points – in the opener. The Swede also picked up a five-place grid penalty for his fourth reprimand of 2017, so a sixth place for Rast put him in the picture. The other man to go through to the finale with an outside title chance for an all-audi battle was Mike Rockenfeller. The 2013 champion showed superb pace on a long run before his first pitstop and, when he rejoined on fresh tyres, he was armed with a war chest stocked full of DRS, using this to fight through to second place ahead of Glock.
With Wittmann out of the points after struggling for speed, and Mercedes’ Lucas Auer finishing eighth, that ruled them out of the title battle, but Wittmann would fight back on Sunday.
Key to his win was Audi keeping all four of its title contenders on track on almost-identical strategies until deep into the second half of the race. After being nerfed by Auer at Turn 1, Rast recovered from fifth and got onto the tails of poleman and early leader Tom Blomqvist and Wittmann.
Blomqvist lost time with a slow pitstop and would be torpedoed out of the race by Robert Wickens, while Wittmann’s quicker early-stop strategy left Rast with too much to do.
Ekstrom drove into Green’s rear end as they battled towards the back on lap one, and Green dropped to last. But the Brit had repassed Ekstrom by the time they made their late stops, and Rast’s title would depend on the progress they made with their tyre advantage through the early stoppers. Green made it to a brilliant fifth, behind Rockenfeller and Gary Paffett, with Ekstrom eighth.
“Crossing the finish line I didn’t know if I was champion,” related Rast. “The first radio call I got was, ‘You finished second’, and I was, ‘OK, I didn’t win the championship’, and I was quite upset. Then I heard screaming and I was in tears – the best day of my life!”
Wittmann ended the year just 19 points adrift – having lost 25 when his BMW was excluded from a Zandvoort victory because of insufficient fuel for a sample. Green, for his part, gifted Ekstrom a win at the Red Bull Ring when Audi thought it still had pressure from rival marques for the title (the 14-point swing would have easily overcome his six-point deficit to Rast). For them, DTM 2017 was a case of what might have been.