Edoardo Mortara is the first winner of the 2016 DTM season. The Italian from Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline kept his cool in the heated battle of the DTM season opener.
Youngster Nico Müller shone on clinching his first pole position in his brief career and an unusually large advantage of more than two tenths of a second. Edoardo Mortara ensured that two Audi drivers started from the front row.
The preliminary decision was immediately produced on the first few meters. While Mortara on the inside managed an optimum start, Müller did not perfectly get off the line. The Swiss initially dropped to second place and, subsequently, behind Robert Wickens (Mercedes-Benz), to third place, which he went on to defend up to the checkered flag. This meant that he immediately achieved his goal for the season – the first podium in the DTM – in the first race of the year.
Edoardo Mortara instantly managed to pull clear of the front of the field and to extend his advantage, in spite of several yellow periods in a hectic race, to a little more than two seconds. Afterwards, he controlled the pace and in commanding style went on to bring home his fourth DTM victory in total. “A dream result,” said the Audi driver. “I’m very happy for the whole team and my new race engineer, Nicola Palarchi. I’m not in the best of health at the moment, so this success is all the more fantastic. My Audi RS 5 DTM was simply perfect today.”
With Mattias Ekström in ninth place and Miguel Molina in position ten, all four drivers from Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline scored points on Saturday. Ekström and Molina were involved in wild position battles, in which Ekström’s car in particular was severely damaged, nearly throughout the race.
On Sunday all Audi drivers chose arisky qualifying strategy and only started from places in the second half of the grid. Seventh place of Nico Müller remained the best result.