Britain’s Josh Files, who’d been crowned as 2017 TCR Germany champion the previous day, ended his season by taking victory in the final race of the year at Hockenheim. The win – the sixth of the season for the Target Competition driver – means Files ended the year 65 points clear of his closest challenger, Mike Halder.
After starting from pole position, Files battled with Moritz Oestreich for the first couple of laps until the latter snatched the lead on lap 2. Oestreich, however, was judged to have jumped the start and so incurred a drive-through penalty, which handed the lead back to Files who then started to build an advantage over the chasing pack.
While fighting to retain fifth place, Files’ teammate Kris Richard was involved in an incident with the Fugel Motorsport Honda of Oestreich’s colleague Steve Kirsch on lap 2, with both cars forced to retire after the contact. Behind the scrap for the lead, Max Hofer, Niels Langeveld and Mike Halder were all fighting for the remaining podium place, which rapidly became a battle with Files once Oestreich received his penalty.
While this four-way scrap went on, the Safety Car was deployed on lap 10 after the Target Competition Audi of Simon Larsson made contact with the sister car of Tim Zimmermann, resulting in Larsson’s car needing recovery. After two laps, Files timed the restart beautifully and started to pull away from Hofer, Langeveld and Halder. Antti Buri passed Luca Engstler for fifth place and Sheldon van der Linde soon also passed Engstler for sixth. A mistake for Buri then saw him run wide, forcing Engstler off the track as he rejoined. Buri eventually finished eighth behind the Alfa Romeo of guest driver Luigi Ferrara and after the race he was dropped to 30th by a 30-second penalty for the incident with Engstler.
But the eventful final race of the season had one more trick up its sleeve. The Audi of Niko Kankkunen hit the barriers while trying to pass Ferrara on lap 14 and so the Safety Car came out again. The Race Director then decided to bring out the red flags with around four minutes of the race remaining, so Files duly took his sixth win of the season ahead of a delighted Max Hofer, who scored his first podium finish of the year, and Niels Langeveld in third place.
Fourth place was enough to secure the runner-up spot in the series for Mike Halder, while Sheldon van der Linde, Pascal Eberle, Ferrara, Kankkunen, Alex Morgan and Florian Thoma rounded off the top ten.
