Proczyk is victorious as Halder gets penalty

Harald Proczyk and his HP Racing Opel Astra TCR emerged as the winners in the TCR Germany opening race at Oschersleben Motorsport Arena.
In a race that was disrupted three times by the safety car, Proczyk inherited the lead on lap 8 from Mike Halder, when the Honda driver was given a drive through for a collision with Florian Thoma right after the start. This was the reason for the first safety car intervention, in order to recover Thoma’s Volkswagen Golf.
When the race resumed, Halder led from Proczyk and Niels Langeveld; Antti Buri and Dominik Fugel were fighting for fourth position; on lap 3, Buri went wide and in rejoining he clashed with Fugel who crashed. The safety car was deployed again.
At the restart Halder managed to pull away, but on lap 8 he was given the drive through and handed the leadership to Proczyk who was chased by Langeveld. Luca Engstler overtook Buri for third, then Max Hesse went off and got stranded in a gravel trap, which was the reason for another intervention of the safety car.
This left only one lap of racing before the end; Proczyk was able to keep Langeveld at bay and so did Engstler with Buri for third place.
Benjamin Leuchter completed an outstanding recovery to tenth position; he had qualified third, but was later excluded because his car was underweight and dropped to the back of the grid for both races.
Race 2 will start tomorrow at 10:00; live streaming at www.tcr-series.com and www.tcr-series.tv.