Vietoris: “This weekend went nearly perfect for me”
Mercedes’ Christian Vietoris has described his performance in yesterday’s DTM season opener as “nearly perfect.”
Vietoris looked competitive all weekend and was a contender for pole position during Saturday’s qualifying session, but was unable to get the maximum out of his car and eventually lined up third.
Despite dropping back to as low as 11th as a result of a poor start on prime tyres in yesterday’s race, the HWA Mercedes driver put in a determined drive to claw his way back to the position he started and claim his first DTM career podium with third place.
“I was thinking about it a lot last night that I was starting on the hard tyres and pretty much everyone around me was on the options,” said Vietoris in the post-race press conference.
“I thought I may have dropped back in the first few laps which I did.
“After a difficult season last year, it’s really positive to have a start like this to the new season.
“I’m pretty satisfied with the race and this weekend went nearly perfect for me.”
Vietoris also agreed with the first and second placed BMW drivers, Augusto Farfus and Dirk Werner, that the addition of DRS and the option tyre made the race more confusing for teams and drivers.
“It was really hard actually to keep an overview of where you are, but my team managed me through that really well as they kept me updated all the time.
“We drivers have a lot more work [to do] in the car; we don’t just have to drive fast, but we have to manage the tyres, keep our eyes in our mirrors as someone can always be much faster because of the option [tyre] or DRS.
“It’s really difficult this year.”
