René Rast: “Our target is to be the best non-Mercedes”

Audi Sport Team Rosberg driver René Rast dominated all sessions on the track today to score his first pole position and his second victory of the year, and the reigning champion says he’s on an upward performance curve and feels the top three of the championship is within reach.

Rast started from the pole position and led the race, but came under fire from BMW’s Bruno Spengler in the last ten minutes, still managing to stay ahead and take the victory, even with a margin less of a second. “I’m very happy as it was a clean race and a very good race as I was fastest in all three sessions,” Rast said to TouringCarTimes. “The last ten minutes of the race were very hard for me as I had to fight a lot to stay ahead of Bruno.

“I hadn’t been on the podium in DTM at the Nürburgring, I have been on the podium at every other track, only Norisring is missing now, so yes, overall, a good day.”

The 31-year-old believes the new rule about a minimum tyre pressure has been beneficial for the championship, as he was able to find some pace he wasn’t counting on: “It was all good in the end, we brought some good points for the championship. It was unexpected, as the rule change has brought up the competitiveness of the manufacturers, so we’ll see how the season progresses now.

Rast has had momentum in recent races, with two victories and two podium finishes from the last six races, and is now up to fifth place in the standings. Asked about his target for the remainder of the season, the Audi driver said.

“Our goal is to be the best non Mercedes, that’s the goal. I think we’ve come quite close to that target as Marco (Wittmann, BMW) is just one point ahead of us, but is going to be difficult as he was strong in the race. I think Edo (Mortara, Mercedes) is also within reach, so we can still finish on the podium of the championship. I think that’s our ultimate goal and we’ll keep pushing.”

Audi Motorsport boss Dieter Gass was happy with the result and hopes Audi can finish the season on a high in terms of results: “I think that, at this stage, we can only think about turning around in terms of individual race results. We had a good last three or fourth races, since our victory at Zandvoort, which was good for us. We have achieved that without any gifts from the opposition and now I hope we can become stable at this level.”