Having qualified on pole position in his Schubert Motorsport BMW, van der Linde was unfazed by two safety cars as he led virtually every lap of the race en route to a fifth career win in the DTM.
Rast secured his first podium as a BMW driver in second following a rapid start, while Dennis Olsen completed the podium spots after late troubles for Abt Audi’s Kelvin van der Linde.
As the race got under way, Sheldon van der Linde led the field into the tight Turn 1 chicane, while Team Bernhard’s Ayhancan Guven dived down the inside of fellow Porsche driver Thomas Preining to take second.
Manthey EMA driver Preining dropped further to eighth by the end of the opening lap, while Rast went in the opposite direction, jumping from seventh to third ahead of Kelvin van der Linde’s Audi.
At the front, Sheldon van der Linde began pulling away from the rest of the field, building a gap of close to one second ahead of Guven.
However, his lead was wiped out after just 10 minutes of racing when an incident between David Schumacher and Luca Engstler brought out the first safety car for the first time.
Engstler’s stricken Audi was rapidly recovered by the Norisring marshals and the racing resumed shortly afterwards, with van der Linde holding the lead in the BMW ahead of Guven’s Porsche, as Kelvin van der Linde tried to pass Rast for third.
Not long after the track had green the safety car was out again, this time for debris left on track after contact between Jack Aitken and Clemens Schmid at the exit of Turn 1.
But as was the case at the previous occasion, the track was cleared soon for racing, with the Cupra safety car returning back to the pits in little time.
Source: Autosport