For the favourites, it was a pitch-black day in the first race at Circuit Zandvoort on Saturday. Mattias Ekström and Lucas Auer were soon out of the battle for the top positions after early off-track excursions.

At least, René Rast still scored two points for finishing in ninth place. BMW, on the other hand, took its chance and scored a clean sweep of the top three. After a pair of second places, Timo Glock scored his first win of the season from Marco Wittmann and Maxime Martin.

“Now, I have twice as many points as I have ever had in a full DTM season before. I wanted to be in the top five of the drivers’ standings. Currently, it seems as if we are in a position to pull that off. Today, I have scored 28 points. But tomorrow, everything can be entirely different again. There is still a long way to go until the end of the season,” Glock said after his fourth DTM career win. With 98 points, the BMW driver is currently fourth in the drivers’ standings after eleven of 18 points.

Audi driver René Rast (114 points) is now one point ahead of his fellow Audi driver Mattias Ekström (113 points). In the race, Rast also established a new DTM lap record for the track on the Dutch North Sea coast with a time of 1m30.160s on lap 21. Mercedes-AMG driver Lucas Auer remains third (99 points).

The situation drivers’ standings promises a thrilling battle for the title in the remaining races. The first eight drivers are only 29 points apart. The situation in today’s race was just as close. Eventually, race winner Glock was only 12.9 seconds ahead of twelfth-placed Edoardo Mortara (Mercedes-AMG).

“After having come in early for our pit stop, it was difficult to keep the tyres alive throughout the distance. This is a great result for BMW.

I am very happy.” Just like Martin, Wittmann pitted on lap seven. For the BMW driver, second place was his best season result to date. For the defending champion, Zandvoort is a very good venue anyway."

"In his races at the track in the dunes so far, he never finished lower than fifth. Wittmann is now seventh in the drivers’ standings with 91 points, Maxime Martin is one place ahead of him with 93 points. For the Belgian, his third place was already his fourth podium finish of the season.

“At the end of the race, the Audis were faster, I had to defend my position against Mike Rockenfeller. Certainly, the good qualifying was 50 percent of the result here.”

Already six times in 2017, a BMW driver started from pole position, but only twice, it was enough to win a race. This time, it worked out in a race once again. With 380 points, the brand from Munich moved ahead of Mercedes-AMG (351) in the manufacturers’ standings. Audi remains undisputedly in the lead (446).

For Lucas Auer, the race was his fourth non-score of the season. After an off-track excursion in the first half of the race, the Austrian only finished 15th: “Today simply was a very difficult day. There is no need for any long comments. That’s racing. Tomorrow is another day. We will get it done.” Classified seventh, Paul Di Resta was the best-placed Mercedes-AMG driver."

"The 2010 champion will be competing in his 100th DTM race in the second race of the weekend on Sunday. For Mattias Ekström, things didn’t go to plan at all. The Swede, who already won at Zandvoort four times, came in for a tyre change on lap four and then slid into the gravel trap immediately afterwards and then spun once more."

"In total, he lost some 30 seconds in the process. With three laps remaining, ‘Eki’ parked his Audi in the pits from 17th place with a puncture"