Gary Paffett stepped up his bid for this year's DTM touring car title with a stunning victory at Oschersleben in eastern Germany on Sunday, the Mercedes young gun scoring a convincing victory over his main title rival, last year's champion Mattias Ekstrom of Audi.

Mercedes star Gary started the weekend straight on leading pace, ending the three hours of testing on Friday in fourth place overall: "That wasn't too bad. We expected the Audis to be very fast here, like they were last year, but we did some good long runs that showed we were being very kind to our tyres. After 20 laps our lap times were the same as they were after four laps, so it showed we possessed very good consistency ahead of the race."

Gary also ended Saturday morning's free practice session fourth quickest as teams searched for that extra pace to seal a good qualifying position: "We improved the car's set-up once again on Saturday morning, and I was very happy with the laptime. What we couldn't prepare for, though, was what the weather was about to do."

The DTM paddock was hit by hurricane-force winds, and qualifying was delayed while the circuit was draining of excess standing water from the thunderstorms that followed. It meant that the single-lap Super Pole session was cancelled, so the grid would be decided by a single 30-minute session.

"We thought the rain would arrive at about 13.30 to 14.00, but it came much earlier," said Gary. "I'd never seen rain like it, it was incredible, so it was amazing that the track was dry enough for slicks in qualifying."

Gary was consistently fastest throughout the session, but his strategy of going out slightly earlier than some of his rivals backfired slightly, and he was forced to abort his final lap due to traffic. Despite this, he was still on pole position with five minutes to go, but two cars managed to better his time, leaving him third.

"The main thing was to be in front of my main title rival, Mattias Ekstrom, which I achieved. Third is not a bad position to end up with, considering the conditions were changing all the time. Maybe we went a bit early, but you never knew what was going to happen. I had a spin on my first run, so someone could easily have caused a yellow flag in those last five minutes, so I would have stayed on pole."

The start of the race was frantic, as record seven-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Tom Kristensen stalled his Audi that was on pole position, forcing Gary to swerve around him and allowing his Mercedes colleague Jamie Green to grab an unexpected lead, with Gary staying third behind the second Audi of Martin Tomczyk. Not content with his position, Gary pushed hard in the opening stages and pulled off a spectacular pass on Tomczyk at the second corner on lap two.

Gary held second position until the first round of pitstops, when his factory HWA Mercedes crew changing his four wheels and tyres in a super-quick time, gaining two-seconds on Green and releasing Gary just ahead of his fellow Briton in the pitlane. They raced side-by-side for a moment, until Gary jumped ahead into a lead he would never lose.

"It was a great pitstop by my team, I have to thank them for it," said Gary. "Once I got passed Tomczyk and then got ahead of Jamie in the pitlane, I knew I was well set for the win. The rest of the race went to plan, and I was able to pull away from those behind over the next stint."

The only rival to Gary's win was Ekstrom, who also passed Green and then closed up in the late stages, but Gary was equal to the challenge. "It's always hard when you have Ekstrom chasing you, and I had quite a bit of oversteer to contend with in the closing stages, but it was a case of keeping a safe gap to him. He made me work for it, but I enjoy a challenge!"

Gary is now just one point behind Ekstrom in the title race as the series moves on to the famous Norisring track in Nuremburg, also in Germany.