Jamie Green cruised to his third Norisring win in a row, after pole-sitter Ralf Schumacher was forced to serve a drive through penalty after a jump start.
Green made a clean start to pass Bruno Spengler into the first corner, while Martin Tomczyk had a nightmare start from 4th by stalling his Audi and dropped way down to 13th.
Meanwhile Paul di Resta did not have a good start to the race, as Alex Premat spun him out under breaking for Turn 4. The Frenchman was under investigation by the stewards afterwards but he got away with the incident without a penalty.
Green pulled away before the first round of stops, but towards the end Mattias Ekstrom, who had already jumped Spengler during the pitstop phase was chasing the Brit down quickly. Try as he might though he ran out of laps to get close enough to attack, and the win belonged to Green. Spengler was also starting to catch both of them – but again he ran out of time to make a move so had to settle for 3rd.
Further down the field David Coulthard passed Markus Winkelhock on lap 16, with Tomczyk following the Scot through a few corners later. Tomczyk then found a way past Coulthard, and when Winkelhock tried to dive down the inside of Coulthard behind Tomczyk the pair collided. He was under investigation by the stewards, but he retired a few laps later after smashing into the wall at the exit of Turn 5 – though Coulthard soldiered on minus his passenger door.
Schumacher meanwhile was ruing what could have been – his race taking another turn for the worse after colliding with Mike Rockenfeller a few laps from the end.
“Today I gave away a possible race win,” said the despondent Schumacher. “Shortly before the start I was looking for the clutch's bite point when the car made a brief move whilst the light was still red.
“I am awfully sorry for my team that we were not able to show how strong our car was today.”
Green meanwhile was much more upbeat after winning the race despite driving a year old C-Class instead of one of the works AMG machines.
“We cannot play football, but at least we can win races,” he said jokingly. “However, it was tough. Mattias Ekström was pushing throughout and I had to stay totally focussed until the chequered flag. On this track it is so easy to make mistakes. Therefore, I am even happier to achieve this hat trick here at the Norsiring and my sixth DTM win in total.”
Pos Driver Car Time/Gap 1. Jamie Green Mercedes 1h08m05.282s 2. Mattias Ekstrom Audi + 0.591s 3. Bruno Spengler Mercedes + 1.910s 4. Oliver Jarvis Audi + 9.946s 5. Timo Scheider Audi + 12.315s 6. Gary Paffett Mercedes + 14.521s 7. Alexandre Premat Audi + 15.834s 8. Martin Tomczyk Audi + 16.100s 9. Maro Engel Mercedes + 22.154s 10. Paul di Resta Mercedes + 31.536s 11. Ralf Schumacher Mercedes + 31.979s 12. Mike Rockenfeller Audi + 34.790s 13. David Coulthard Mercedes + 35.751s 14. Franky Cheng Mercedes + 1 lap 15. Susie Stoddart Mercedes + 1 lap 16. Katherine Legge Audi + 1 lap Retirements: Miguel Molina Audi 29 laps Markus Winkelhock Audi 16 laps