Robin Frijns has taken his maiden victory in DTM by holding off Loic Duval and Nico Müller in front of his home fans at Assen.
The limited crowd of 10,000 fans, the first spectators to attend a DTM race since the season began, saw the Dutchman win from second on the grid thanks to a late pass on polesitter Loic Duval.
Duval took pole position and maintained his lead for the vast majority of the race, until his Hankook tyres began to fade in the closing stages. Duval had pitted on lap 16 and was on older tyres than Frijns, who had pitted on lap 18.
Frijns upped the pressure on Duval and made his way past to move into the lead on lap 30. He then held off a challenge from Duval to take the chequered flag by half a second, with Müller a further four tenths back in third place.
Mike Rockenfeller moved up to fourth late on while Rene Rast, despite holding a podium position early on, could muster no better than fifth place. The reigning champion finished ahead of Jonathan Aberdein and Ferdinand Habsburg.
Habsburg, who finished seventh, started the race from fourth and had an amazing getaway to move up into second place, although he was not able to hang on a podium position and dropped back down the order.
The top ten was completed by Sheldon van der Linde, Timo Glock and Robert Kubica, who scored his first championship point in DTM.
Lucas Auer was eleventh ahead of Harrison Newey, Philipp Eng, Marco Wittmann and Fabio Scherer. Scherer was handed a drivethrough penalty for contact with Wittmann, which sent the German into a spin.
Jamie Green finished fourteen laps down in last place after a mechanical issue prevented the Briton from completing the formation lap. Green’s Audi RS5 DTM was pushed off the grid, which caused race control to issue another formation lap and shorten the race length.
Green eventually rejoined the race, but had no hope of making up places and finished in sixteenth.
