Adrien Tambay not at fault for jump-start at Hockenheim
Adrien Tambay has revealed to TouringCarTimes that he was not to blame for his jump-start in Sunday’s DTM season opener at Hockenheim.
The Audi driver suffered a difficult weekend after qualifying 10th on Saturday and in Sunday’s race he jumped the start and then suffered a car fire, which saw him retire his Iron Man liveried RS5 after just three laps.
However, Tambay explained that the botched start was due to a technical fault similar to the one suffered by Timo Scheider at Zandvoort last season when the German stalled from pole.
“The jump-start was not my fault as it was a malfunction on the car,” said Tambay. “We had a problem on the handbrake a bit like Timo [Scheider] [at Zandvoort] last year.
“It’s a little bit frustrating as it’s never good to finish a race after three laps and when you can’t do anything about it, it’s even worse.
“[However], it was something I couldn’t avoid.”
Despite a difficult weekend for Audi which saw mechanical issues affect both him and Mattias Ekstrom, Tambay remains convinced the issues from Hockenheim can be quickly resolved and Audi can still take the fight to BMW and Mercedes over the rest of the season.
“I’m not worried [about the reliability]. I think we have a strong team and we’ll have a look into what happened.
“It’s not the best start, but we’ll get over it.
“If I didn’t think we could take the fight to BMW and Mercedes, I wouldn’t be in the car at the next race.”
