PAFFETT'S LAST STAND // DTM @ DIJON

Englishman Gary Paffett remains in the race for the 2009 DTM title after a great, if not slightly fortunate win at Dijon. The famous French former F1 circuit staged its first ever round of the DTM which saw Mercedes turn the tables on Audi to record their best result of the season... [read more]

Starting back in eighth spot Paffett went on to take his 3rd win of the season after a typically tigerish drive through the field. With Championship leader Timo Scheider finishing in 6th the contest for the 2009 title will head into the last round at Hockenheim still undecided.

Mercedes sent an early warning shot across Audi's bows in qualifying at the undulating circuit with Bruno Spengler (Below) taking pole ahead of Paul Di Resta. With changeable weather during the session an early casualty was Scheider who would start from 16th after not even making the cut into Q2. Lining up together on the second row would be the Audi's of Tom Kristensen and Mathias Ekstrom.

The story of Sunday's race was tyres as although Paffett battled his way up to 2nd place Exstrom was set to take the win until suffering a puncture with only six laps remaining. Both Kristensen and Scheider befell the same fate and with all the top Audis running much the same setup as in warm up team boss Dr Wolfgang Ulrich was at a loss to explain the issue.

At the fall of the chequer Mercedes filled the first five spots with winner Paffett (below) commenting " Coming up from eighth to win was the goal and it was fantastic to achieve that, after Mathias's puncture I was able to back off a bit, but it was then difficult dropping the pace while keeping full concentration".

Norbert Haug commented post race "I still feel we are out of the championship battle but at least now the final race will be the decider which is always good for the paying spectators".

Race Result:
01 Gary Paffett 52 laps
02 Paul di Resta + 0:00.834
03 Bruno Spengler + 0:01.055
04 Jamie Green + 0:01.308
05 Ralf Schumacher + 0:01.807
06 Timo Scheider + 0:02.239
07 Martin Tomczyk + 0:03.260
08 Mathias Lauda + 0:04.021
09 Mattias Ekström + 0:04.577
10 Markus Winkelhock + 0:04.988

Championship Table After 9 Rounds

01 Timo Scheider 8 4 5 0 10 8 8 10 3 - 56
02 Gary Paffett 0 10 4 10 4 1 5 5 10 - 49
03 Mattias Ekström 2 6 6 6 8 6 4 3 0 - 41
04 Paul di Resta 4 5 2 3 5 0 10 2 8 - 39
05 Bruno Spengler 0 8 8 4 3 3 3 4 6 - 39
06 Martin Tomczyk 0 0 0 5 6 10 6 6 2 - 35
07 Jamie Green 1 3 10 0 0 4 0 0 5 - 23
08 Tom Kristensen 10 0 1 1 1 0 0 8 0 - 21
09 Oliver Jarvis 6 0 0 8 0 0 1 0 0 - 15
10 Markus Winkelhock 5 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 -
10

So Scheider heads to Hockenheim in two weeks time with a diminshed championship lead but with Audi taking a 1-3 finish there earlier in the season his biggest threat will most probably be complaciancy.


Editorial: Neil Tozer
Photo: DTM.com