Audi driver Mike Rockenfeller was one of several drivers handed a post-race penalty following Sunday’s event at Moscow Raceway, dropping out of the points entirely as a consequence.
The 2013 DTM champion had scored six points in the second race of the Moscow weekend, but stewards found him to have used DRS for more than the allocated number of laps, which is capped at twelve.
This infraction carries a five second penalty, and with the narrow gaps between drivers throughout most of the field at the race finish, this dropped him down to thirteenth place.
In a regular scenario, this would have promoted eleventh placed Gary Paffett to the final points position. However, the Brit was also pulled up by the stewards, in his case for a collision with Loïc Duval. They put the blame squarely on the Mercedes driver’s shoulders, handing him a 30 second time penalty which demoted him to sixteenth place.
The main benefactor of the penalties handed out was Edoardo Mortara, who had finished twelfth on the road but now earns the final point for tenth.
The changes are especially important for Rockenfeller, who will lose fifth place in the championship rankings which had just gained from Maxime Martin, thanks to the Belgian’s BMW suffering brake failure and racking up a no-score.
Rockenfeller and Paffett were not the only drivers to incur the wrath of the stewards. Paul di Resta was excluded from the race results for skipping the post-race weighbridge, an effectively academic punishment given he retired with four laps to go.
There was also a €1,000 fine handed down to Tom Blomqvist, who violated protocol by not reattaching his steering wheel after dismounting from his BMW M4 in parc fermé. This was his second infraction of the day, having been stripped of pole position for the same race the same morning.
