Audi pleased despite Tomczyk exclusion

Audi have no complaints over the exclusion of Martin Tomczyk, despite the disqualification marring an almost perfect weekend for the marque. Mattias Ekström took pole position, fastest lap and the race victory, his first in the DTM since October 2008, while another four Audi A4’s occupied the top eight points scoring positions at the Valencia round of the German series.

“If you haven’t won for such a long time you can really feel how sweet victory is,” said Ekström after clinching his 14th career DTM victory.

“I’m very pleased about having won again after a longer period of time. “This is a rare moment in my life because here I managed the triple of a pole position, fastest race lap and victory. Now I’m just happy, and until tomorrow you’ll only see me with a big grin on my face.

“Everything worked perfectly. The tires held up too. I was a little worried when I felt some vibrations – but that was just pick-up on the tires. The ten points for the championship really feels good.”

Victory moves Ekström up to second in the standings, three points behind Mercedes’ Bruno Spengler, who inherited second after Tomczyk’s removal from the results.

Tomczyk was disqualified for one of the twelves tyres used on his Audi during the race was taken from the wrong batch, but Audi accepted the stewards decision, as Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich, Head of Audi Motorsport explained.

“The team had mixed up a barcode and so a tire from the wrong lot was put on his car for the last stint. This did not give Martin any advantage but the rules prescribe a disqualification in this case.

“We’ve got to live with this now and make sure that something like this will never happen again, because we lost valuable points and gave points to our rivals. There’s no room for this in the DTM.”

“I didn’t think that I’d be able to advance to second after starting from position nine,” said Tomczyk. “That makes the disqualification even more frustrating.”

Oliver Jarvis was the other Audi driver to ‘lose’ a podium finish, retiring eight laps from the end with low fuel pressure. That prevented an Audi 1-2-3 on the post-race podium and left Team Abt Sportsline Director Hans-Jürgen Abt promising the same wouldn’t happen again.

“Well done’ to Mattias Ekström: after a long barren spell he won again. That’s incredibly reassuring for him.

“The other drivers, too, drove great races – Oliver, ‘Magic Molina,’ Timo (Scheider) and Martin in particular. That he lost second place due to a small mistake with serious consequences is a bitter pill. Something like this mustn’t happen. I feel incredibly sorry for Oliver as well.”

Jarvis has now failed to trouble the scorers at either of the opening two races, something that troubles the Briton, particularly in view of his excellent performances in Spain.

“My first stint was very good”, said Jarvis, “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get past Bruno Spengler. So I stayed behind him the whole time.

“Unfortunately, we had a problem after the second stop when the fuel pressure was gone all of a sudden. I don’t know the cause exactly yet. That meant the end of my race. It was too bad because things were going really well up to that point in time. Now, we’ve lost many points again today.”

Benefiting from the demise of Tomczyk and Jarvis were Alexandre Prémat, who took his third DTM podium after enjoying a fierce duel with Gary Paffett, and Miguel Molina, who initially lost a point when Paffett passed him on the final lap. Tomczyk’s removal though ensured the Spaniard has scored points in both of his first two DTM races.