Zandvoort DTM: Wickens controls Saturday race

The Canadian delivered Mercedes' first win at the venue since 2010 and moved up to second in the points standings as a result.

At the start, Wickens quickly moved across to cover BMW driver Marco Wittmann, allowing himself to comfortably lead through the first few corners before the safety car came out for a startline shunt.

The accident in question took Maximilian Gotz and Adrien Tambay out the race, after Tambay had nearly stalled and Martin Tomczyk pushed Gotz into the Frenchman while trying to move up the order.

Tomczyk was handed a drive-through as a result and the race would restart on lap 4, with Wittmann managing to hang on within DRS range of Wickens over the first few green flag laps.

However, around the time the slow zone came out for Augusto Farfus crashing out in the barriers at Turn 8, Wickens cleared the one-second mark and proceeded to check out.

The outcome of the victory battle was under no doubt from that point on, as Wickens established a gap of more than seven seconds by the time the chequered flag came out.

Points leader Wittmann, meanwhile, came under pressure from Christian Vietoris, but managed to deny Mercedes a 1-2, scoring just his second podium of the season.

With two laps to go, Vietoris swapped positions with Gary Paffett to allow the Briton to have a go at Wittmann - but it came to naught, and the German was allowed to re-pass the Briton on the final tour.

Jamie Green drove a lonely race in fifth, with Antonio Felix da Costa holding off Mattias Ekstrom and Dani Juncadella to pick up sixth.

Mercedes and Renault F1 tester Esteban Ocon scored his first DTM points with a ninth-place finish, with Maxime Martin making up the top 10.

Edoardo Mortara, who had entered the race as championship runner-up, was penalised for going too fast in the slow-zone when he was running sixth on track.

His spot in the championship has now been taken by Wickens, who is 10 points off points leader Wittmann.

Race results

Pos.	Driver	Car	Time/Interval
1	Robert Wickens	Mercedes	41:55.441
2	Marco Wittmann	BMW	7.217
3	Christian Vietoris	Mercedes	1.770
4	Gary Paffett	Mercedes	1.670
5	Jamie Green	Audi	1.969
6	António Félix da Costa	BMW	5.552
7	Mattias Ekström	Audi	0.699
8	Daniel Juncadella	Mercedes	0.289
9	Esteban Ocon	Mercedes	0.672
10	Maxime Martin	BMW	3.754
11	Timo Scheider	Audi	0.294
12	Lucas Auer	Mercedes	4.196
13	Bruno Spengler	BMW	1.970
14	Mike Rockenfeller	Audi	0.372
15	Paul di Resta	Mercedes	0.474
16	Tom Blomqvist	BMW	0.518
17	Edoardo Mortara	Audi	0.159
18	Miguel Molina	Audi	0.713
19	Martin Tomczyk	BMW	6.846
20	Nico Muller	Audi	0.415
21	Timo Glock	BMW	5.455
Ret	Augusto Farfus	BMW
Ret	Adrien Tambay	Audi
Ret	Miguel Molina	Audi