Audi boss Dieter Gass: “We can only blame ourselves”
Audi Sport has ended the 2015 season of the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters without taking any crowns back to Ingolstadt, despite a competitive performance throughout the year. Dieter Gass, head of DTM at Audi, thinks it was up to the team to do more.
The mood was sombre despite monopolising the podium. With Mercedes’ Pascal Wehrlein having taken the drivers’ title yesterday, Audi worked towards renewing the manufacturers’ crown, but ended up losing out to BMW Motorsport by just seven points.
Dieter Gass acknowledged the work done by their rivals: “I want to congratulate BMW and Mercedes for their titles”, he told TouringCarTimes. “They have done a good job all year and have won fairly on the track. They deserve their victories.”
Talking about the season finale in Hockenheim, Gass set the tone for the post race debrief: “The only word I have to describe our feeling is bitter. Yes, we got a dominant win here, our performance was there, we had it for ourselves to take it and we didn’t make the most of our opportunity. You can argue whether Miguel was fully at fault [Vietoris incident] and whether a drive through was really necessary. But we cannot look outside for the responsibility about what has happened”.
Asked about the importance of the 62 points lost after the ‘schieb ihn raus’ incident at Spielberg, when Audi was excluded as a manufacturer from the results of the race, and their effect on the final result, Dieter Gass maintained the the self criticism: “We have been fast all season, have won half of the races and our car has been the strongest. We can’t think about all the ifs and buts, but we must realise that we had the chance to take the Manufacturers’ title today, and we simply weren’t good enough. We really only got ourselves to blame.”
Jamie Green was Audi’s best placed driver in the final standings in second place, 19 points behind the champion, with Mattias Ekström and Edoardo Mortara following in the classification. In the teams’ table, Team Abt Sportsline was third, 24 points behind HWA AG. In the Manufacturer’s championship, Audi came second after BMW by just seven points.
