JAMIE GREEN ON RAST

Green may be the moral DTM champion in the eyes of some, but he has no hesitation in rating Rast.

“He’s stuck at it and come up through Porsches and GTS – he’s got a lot of natural ability and he’s got the right attitude as well,” says Green. “It was a good time to join the DTM, because it was the first year without tyre blankets. So he didn’t have any preconceptions about how to approach that [putting in a new-tyre run in qualifying]. He did a good job in qualifying – that makes life easier in the DTM, and that was his main strength. And he found himself in a well-set-up team, because Rosberg has developed into a complete unit. So from my perspective it wasn’t such a big surprise. We had a good package and he was talented enough to make the most of it.” Rast replaced Adrien

Tambay, dropped at the end of 2016, in the Rosberg line-up and Green found him a good team-mate to work with. “He’s a confident character and pretty straightforward,” he says. “And he’s got a decent sense of humour, which makes life easier. I think we’ll stay together next year. He’s good enough to keep you sharp, and doesn’t create a bad atmosphere.”

Rosberg, in Green’s eyes, has supplanted long-time

Audi spearhead Team Abt as the number-one squad for the Ingolstadt marque.

“You only have to look at the teams’ standings this year,” he points out. “The team has developed in the last couple of years and now it’s strong enough to run two cars at a high level. And this year it had two drivers capable of exploiting that.”