Mercedes happy to see the rewards of their hard work
Mercedes AMG didn’t win today at the Red Bull Ring, host of the fifth round of the 2015 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters season, but they have many reasons to be happy. At the half-way point in the season, the Stuttgart manufacturer lead the Drivers’ and Teams’ points tables.
Pascal Wehrlein and Paul Di Resta, second and third today, put two Mercedes C63 DTMs on the podium. The 20-year old German driver now leads the championship classification, having become the youngest ever to do so at the DTM. Wehrlein thinks that the hard work put in by the team is behind his great success: “I’m highly satisfied with the job done by my team, especially when you consider that I had to abandon Friday’s free practice session after just a few minutes because I had a problem with the car. This meant that I didn’t have a lot of time to get the setup right on my car, but we still managed to make the best of the situation. The partnership with my team is going really well, and I want to make a point of thanking everyone involved.”
Christian Vietoris was fourth, with Gary Paffett in seventh place. With this result, Mercedes was the highest scoring manufacturer today, totalling 51 points and reducing the gap in the championship to Audi. In the Teams’ table, the goois/Original Teile division of HWA AG leads with 146 points, 33 more than Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline.
The other side of the coin was for Robert Wickens, who had damage from the start and had to retire when he was in the points, and Lucas Auer, who struggled in front of his home crowd.
Ullrich Fritz, Head of DTM for Mercedes, was happy that his cars have made steps forward, but is mindful that only the discipline of hard work will be effective in keeping the momentum going: “A double podium and four drivers in the top seven were the maximum today and a great result for us at the same time, for sure. Of course, it feels good to lead the drivers’ and team championship mid-season and is a well-deserved reward for the work done by the entire team. However, the field is very tightly bunched, and it could all change again on Sunday. Considering how close things were today, we’ve got a tough task ahead of us again tomorrow.”
The DTM goes back to the track tomorrow for the warm up session at 11:00 CEST (GMT + 2).
