Jaap van Lagen replaced James Thompson at Lada Sport Rosneft as the British driver recovered from surgery.

A test at the Hungaroring following the Race of Hungary saw one chassis damaged and the team was reduced to running two cars; Mikhail Kozlovskiy was sidelined for the German round.

[3] There were no revisions to the compensation weights after Hungary; the Citroën C-Elysée WTCCs retained maximum ballast to weigh 1,160 kilograms (2,557 lb).

[4] Tom Coronel and John Filippi upgraded to the latest RML engine in their Chevrolet Cruzes and would be sent to the back of the grid for race one.

López stopped on track in the middle of the session with technical problems before being able to restart and continue while Schmitz set the slowest time.

[7] Van Lagen and Robert Huff finished 1–2 for Lada in the first free practice session on Friday which took place in wet and foggy conditions, Tom Chilton was third and Tiago Monteiro fourth.

The yellow flags came out when Ma crashed into the barriers between Flugplatz and Adenauer which foiled any attempts by other drivers to topple López who took pole.

[12] The GP-Strecke was used to complete the warm up lap before the race got underway, Valente got a slow start and jinked to the right defend from Michelisz and the two made contact.

Muller used the slipstream at Döttinger Höhe to pass Monteiro and take the lead while Bennani and Ma moved up to fourth and fifth at the expense of Coronel.

On lap two D'Aste had sustained damage to his front bumper which left it partially hanging off and dragging along the ground while up ahead both Loeb and López had also passed Coronel.

Ma lost the back end of his Citroën at Schwedenkreuz and cut across the grass but recovered without losing places, later on in the lap at Döttinger Höhe he moved up to fourth after slipstreaming Bennani.