Auer had started the race from pole and led comfortably in the early stages, but had to survive a late assault from BMW driver Glock to claim his second win in the series.

As Auer launched well off the line at the start in his Team BWT Mercedes C63, Glock was able to slot into third by jumping ahead of Mercedes new boy and Auer’s team-mate Edoardo Mortara before clearing Gary Paffett’s Mercedes for second a lap later.

But despite getting clear, Glock could not keep pace with Auer in the opening stint, the Austrian advancing as far as nine seconds up the road from the chasing pack as Glock came under increasing pressure from behind.

Having withstood a couple of half-lunges from Paffett, Glock was able to claw back some of his deficit to Auer before the pair both opted to stop on lap 17 - and the ex-F1 driver made up further ground when Auer was delayed slightly while exiting his pitbox.

Glock’s hopes of challenging for victory looked to have been dashed as he was overtaken on his lap out of the pits by Mike Rockenfeller – the Audi driver having pitted early out of sequence to elevate himself into a net second place.

But Team RMG driver fought his way back past at the two-thirds distance and, when Mattias Ekstrom and Loic Duval eventually pitted from first and second, set about chasing down Auer.

With five laps remaining Glock had wrestled his way to within DRS range of Auer and wasted no time in trying to startle the long-time leader, harrying the Mercedes man from the Parabolika to the stadium section.

That trend continued, but Auer was wise to Glock’s advances and quickly shut down any attacks.

The pair made slight contact at the hairpin on the penultimate lap but held station, before Glock eventually ceded his chase – crossing the line 1.942s down.

Rockenfeller had briefly flirted with the lead battle once more as the front two squabbled, but spent the final lap resisting Mortara to claim his first podium since the 2015 season – a fine return from 16th on the grid.

Behind Mortara, Ekstrom was another big mover on his way to fifth, as was Rene Rast.

On his first start as a full-time driver for Audi, Rast picked his way through the field – including a brilliant pass on Paul di Resta at the hairpin and subsequent brusque defence of the place – to claim sixth ahead of Paffett and di Resta.

Nico Muller and 2016 DTM champion Marco Wittmann completed the points.

Pos.	Driver	Car	Gap
1	Lucas Auer	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM
2	Timo Glock	BMW M4 DTM	1.942
3	Mike Rockenfeller	Audi RS5 DTM	3.351
4	Edoardo Mortara	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	3.984
5	Mattias Ekström	Audi RS5 DTM	4.275
6	René Rast	Audi RS5 DTM	5.855
7	Gary Paffett	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	6.956
8	Paul di Resta	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	13.648
9	Nico Müller	Audi RS5 DTM	17.510
10	Marco Wittmann	BMW M4 DTM	19.190
11	Maxime Martin	BMW M4 DTM	20.800
12	Bruno Spengler	BMW M4 DTM	21.504
13	Augusto Farfus	BMW M4 DTM	25.351
14	Loic Duval	Audi RS5 DTM	34.343
15	Robert Wickens	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	43.948
16	Tom Blomqvist	BMW M4 DTM	44.956
17	Maro Engel	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	51.525
18	Jamie Green	Audi RS5 DTM	1'02.944