Bromley’s Gary Paffett has taken his first DTM win of 2013 at the Lausitzring, and Mercedes first since the Norisring last season.

The 2005 DTM champion started the race from second on the grid, but after passing pole-sitter and HWA team-mate, Christian Vietoris, the Briton was relatively unchallenged in his run to victory.

Mike Rockenfeller was once again best of the Audis and finished second behind Paffett by 6.8 seconds, after having started sixth on the grid. The 2010 Le Mans winner first pitted on lap-four to maximise a standard-option-standard tyre strategy, and worked his way up to second come the end of the race.

Despite having closed the gap to a mere 0.668s to Paffett at one point after the Mercedes’ first stop, Rockenfeller was unable to mount a challenge, and had to eventually settle for second.

The Audi driver is now tied with Spengler on 59 points at the top of the drivers’ championship standings, but leads the French Canadian on countback.

Christian Vietoris finished third to take his second podium of the season after passing team-mate, Robert Wickens, in the race’s closing stages.

“I had a great car. This was a perfect race. We got everything out of the option tyres and then tried to keep our margin big enough to prevent Rocky to use the DRS,” Paffett said after his third race win at Lausitz.

For Mercedes-Benz, it was already the ninth win in the 15th race at the Lausitzring.