Gary Paffett: “My car was simply brilliant”

Gary Paffett, who won today’s DTM race at the Lausitzring has described the performance of his Mercedes C-Coupe as “simply brilliant” all weekend.

Paffett, who qualified second after making a mistake on his hot-lap in yesterday’s qualifying session, made a brilliant start to take the lead from pole-sitter and HWA team-mate, Christian Vietoris, as they went into the first corner.

The 2005 DTM champion remained there for the rest of the race to take his 20th DTM career victory, and his first since the Norisring last season.

“My car was simply brilliant to drive the whole weekend,” said Paffett. “After the Saturday session, a lot of commentators were assuming that we had set the car up specifically for qualifying, but even in race trim, we were very fast.”

The Briton then went on to praise Mercedes’ improvements to the car after a tough start to the season, in which it largely struggled in qualifying.

“After the disappointing start to the season, the team has really got stuck in over these last couple of weeks, and this victory is the perfect reward for all our hard work.

“It’s been a while since I last won a race, [and] this one is all the more satisfying because it’s my twentieth in the DTM.”

Paffett also admitted that his stint on the option Hankook rubber was slightly more difficult than anticipated, which is why second placed finisher, Audi’s Mike Rockenfeller, was able to close within 0.6 seconds at one stage of the race.

However, when the Mercedes driver ran his final stint on the standard tyre, he was able to pull away from the joint championship leader to take his third Lausitzring victory by 6.8 seconds.

“It was a bit more difficult for us on the option tyres,” continued Paffett. “But we were able to pull away from Mike Rockenfeller on the primes.”

Paffett now lies third in the championship on 47 points, 12 behind joint championship leaders, Rockenfeller and BMW’s Bruno Spengler.