Rockenfeller ready to spring a surprise

Mike Rockenfeller is having the season of his life. Victories in the 24 Hour races at Le Mans and Daytona have established him as one of the stars of motorsport in 2010.

But he still has one statistic to put right. One that's been bugging him for a while now. In more than three years of DTM competition, he's yet to win a race. In fact, he's only ever been on the podium once.

However, the Phoenix Audi driver has his best chance yet to put right that right at the Norising this weekend. Here's why:

In a bid to cut development costs by making the previous iterations of the Mercedes C-Class and Audi A4 more competitive against the current machines, organising body the ITR has taken 25kg off the minimum weight of the older cars this year.

At the opening three rounds, this move has made little impact on the runners at the front of the field, such is the advantage afforded to the latest machines by their more advanced aerodynamic packages.

However, the Norising is not your typical circuit. Situated on the former Nazi party rally grounds in the south-east corner of Nuremberg, the track is essentially two hairpins, a chicane and three long straights.

The knock-on effect of that is that the older cars should, in theory, be the ones to beat, thanks to what ought to be greater acceleration out of the slow corners than the more favoured machines.

That's good news for Rockenfeller, who started the year outside the top 100 in the Castrol Rankings, but who now lies 66th after his Le Mans win.

Even two-time series champion Mattias Ekstrom, driving an Abt-Sportsline A4, has gone public in stating that he'd rather have an old car for this weekend's race.

Audi looks likely to be fighting a losing battle as its rival manufacturer, Mercedes, is going for its eight straight win at the Norisring, a track that regularly attracts more than 100,000 fans and undoubtedly hosts the DTM's showpiece even

However, it came close to victory last year; champion Timo Scheider (60) putting his car on pole and only losing out on victory on the penultimate lap to Jamie Green in, yes, a year-old Mercedes.

Watch out, therefore, for Rockenfeller's French team-mate Alex Premat (178), and even for Team Rosberg's Katherine Legge (359), who set fastest lap last year.

Green (118), is probably the pre-race favourite, having won for the past two years in the DTM, although HWA men Bruno Spengler (65) and Gary Paffett (51), both in current-spec cars and both previous winners at the track, have the championship in their minds and will be gunning for glory too. Easy to call? Not at all.