Having set the pace in both practice sessions on Friday and also taken pole position in the opening qualifying of the weekend, Engel was again untouchable in his Landgraf Mercedes as he scored an emphatic six-second win over reigning champion Sheldon van der Linde.
It marked Engel’s first win in the DTM since Moscow in 2017 and represented a major turnaround for Mercedes after its quartet of cars struggled for top-line results at Oschersleben last month.
At the start of the race, Engel pulled away cleanly from pole position while van der Linde's Schubert Motorsport BMW came under pressure from Marco Wittmann's Project 1 example in the battle for second.
It was a matter of laps before Engel extended his lead to over a second, with his advantage growing to well over five seconds when the pitlane opened after the first 20 minutes of racing.
Engel headed to the pits for his mandatory stop on lap 19 and returned to the track with his lead intact, van der Linde unable to make any dent into his advantage having pitted on the previous tour.
From there on, Engel could cruise to the finish, with his winning margin the largest seen in the DTM since the penultimate race of the 2021 season at the Norisring.
Van der Linde had no answer to Engel’s pace but was able to secure a first podium of the season in second, having successfully resisted the advances of Wittmann for the entirety of the first stint.
SSR Performance Lamborghini driver Franck Perera followed van der Linde into the pits on lap 18, which allowed him to get the jump on both Wittmann and his own team-mate Mirko Bortolotti to secure the final spot on the rostrum.
Wittmann, who appeared on course for a podium before the pitstops, eventually ended up a disappointing fifth after losing a place to SSR’s Bortolotti on cold tyres following his stop.
Source: Autosport