My first DTM points ! Dear fans, what a great season opener. With a 6th place I scored my first DTM points - for me the coronation of a successful week-end. During practice, qualifying and race I had a perfectly prepared GQ AMG Mercedes C-Class and I have to thank the entire team for the great job. Without them this great result wouldn’t have been possible.

In qualifying I managed to reach Q3 for the first time in my DTM career and thus entering into the top 8. Surely, I also benefited from some bad luck of my team mates, but this time the luck was with me. My C-Class ran perfectly and I knew I had to use this advantage, but against the very powerful Audis in Q3 there was no more improvement possible. Finally I qualified in 7th position. But I was very proud to be second best Mercedes-pilot and best Mercedes-2008 car-driver.

After a good start I had to avoid Martin Tomczyk, who had stalled his Audi. Thus I had won a place, but Markus Winkelhock passed me on my right. At the hairpin I was then directly under the wing of Paul di Resta and on the inside beside Winkelhock. Very closely together we drove into the corner. I was not able to pass them, but when I looked in the mirror, no one was behind me anymore.

Pity that the safety car then came out and so the field was bunched up together again, but I think because of the debris on the track it was necessary to deploy the safety car. Unfortunately, at the restart my front tires were not up to temperature yet so I suffered from some understeer in the first laps and lost 1 place.

In the following laps Martin Tomczyk was pushing hard behind me. Within two laps, he hit me 3 times and damaged or demolished numerous of my aerodynamic parts. The diffuser on the rear of my car was destroyed, which was immediately noticeable due to the lack of downforce on the rear. As a result of the hits in lap eight I got a slow puncture, which I quickly noticed fortunately. Then, a lap later the pit window opened. Immediately I went to do my first stop.

Overall, I lost over 5 seconds and important parts of my aerodynamics due to the careless actions of the Audi driver. Nevertheless, after the first stop I was able to go the pace of the leading group. I had a lot of fun and even after the relatively early second pit stop my car ran very well. However, I had a very long last turn to drive.

I could close the gap to my team mate Paul di Resta lap by lap, but I did not want to risk too much. With pushing a bit harder it was maybe possible to catch him, but that would have stressed my tires too much. So I eased off a little and as Tomczyk and Spengler retired, it was sure that I would score my first points. Two laps from the end I benefited from the tire damage of Mattias Ekström, and I finished in 6th position.

After the race I had the most beautiful moment of the weekend: To see the joy in all of the mechanics and engineers eyes was just great. I think that these three points were a reward for them too. Let us hope that we can have a similarly good run at the Euro Speedway. Thanks to the regulations, we are allowed to remove 5kg of ballast weight.

BTW: I want to thank you, my fans, especially once more. This weekend my first fan club was founded and I am really proud of it. It's just a great feeling to see how you supported me. Keep your fingers crossed. I hope I can give you more good results and great races to celebrate.

Keep racing Maro.