Audi hoping to end win drought

Audi is hoping to end its five month drought of victories in the DTM at Adria, despite their best placing being on row two for race day.

A miscalculation meant Timo Scheider was dropped out in the first qualifying segment after his best lap, which had been good enough for second, was started 0.1s after the chequered flag had waived.

The plus side was this did put Mattias Ekström back in to the session, who went on to qualify in third place.

“In Q4 I made no mistakes but it still wasn’t quite enough,” said Ekström.

“But even from grid position three I’ve got a chance of winning – and considering that I’d already taken off my helmet after Q1 and thought I was out, P3 is definitely okay.”

“Of course that was really frustrating,” said Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich.

“We would have probably had better chances if Timo had made it into the next segments because he set the second-best time in Q1 – unfortunately too late.”

“We were all surprised by how much the track was changing and clearly providing more grip. We didn’t respond to this quickly enough. ‘Eki’ showed a good performance in the end.”

“We know that it’s difficult to overtake on this track but we’ll still try and clinch the victory for which we’ve been fighting for so long now. It’ll probably be a thrilling race, particularly since rain has been predicted for tomorrow.”

Ekström took Audi’s only victory of the 2010 season at Valencia back in May, and the manufacturer has endured it’s most challenging DTM season to date, mathematically out of the championship running with two races remaining.