After just six races into his Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters career, Team Rosberg’s René Rast showed his class as one to really watch this season, as he managed to take advantage of both tyres and speed at the Lausitzring this afternoon to secure his first podium finish.
The 30-year-old, who has taken significant victories at both the Daytona 24 Hours and 24 Hours of Spa, finally battled his way past the Team RBM M4 DTM of Maxime Martin in the final ten minutes to finish on the final step of the podium.
“I’m mega happy with today,” said the Audi Sport driver, whose race engineer Florian Rinkes also helped to this early achievement.
“I was part of the DTM’s supporting program for a long time and always dreamed of mounting the podium in this series. Now the day has come. Getting there was a lot of work and a huge load has been taken off my chest.”
Head of Audi Motorsport Dieter Gass was pleased with Rast’s significant inroads after a great showing from the #33, who had his fair share of battles with the likes of Timo Glock in the early goings.
“I’m tremendously happy for René (Rast) who delivered a podium here. He previously showed a superb performance in qualifying and then went on to up the ante. Mattias (Ekström) and Mike (Rockenfeller) were running well, too. Today, we have to settle for having put four cars in the points. Tomorrow, we’re going to attack again.”
Rast now moves up into fifth in the drivers’s standings with 25 points, equal with Glock, and will be looking to go further in race two tomorrow (Sunday, May 21st).