Paffett penalized after Prémat incident

Gary Paffett has been penalized after the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters premiere at Hockenheim yesterday. Because of his incident with Alexandre Prémat on the first lap, the stewards has awarded him with a five place penalty for the coming race.
“From my perspective it was a racing incident,” Paffett said to Autosport.

Paffett and Prémat collided in the hairpin, resulting in Prémat spinning out and both had to retire.

“I was racing with Ralf (Schumacher) down the backstraight, and I didn’t quite see Alex because he was on the outside,” said Paffett.

“For me it was the normal Hockenheim first lap incident, you see it all the time there, and obviously it’s unfortunate because it destroyed both our races.”

Prémat was disappointed after the race and said that the collision was more serious than it looked like.

“It was a bigger hit than it looked like on TV. When I got back to the pits, we saw that the roof was bent because of the impact. It’s a shame because we had a very good car here,” said Prémat.