D’Aste scores first indie win of ’11 for Wiechers

Stefano D’Aste picked up a strong pair of results for Wiechers-Sport at the team’s home race at Oschersleben, with a win and a second place in the Yokohama independents’ trophy and sixth and ninth overall.

The Italian was in only his second race of the year after returning at Porto last month, where the 36-year-old shone in race two, leading the way for several laps from the reversed grid ahead of Yvan Muller and Rob Huff, before a drive through penalty for a false start deprived him of a podium finish.

Importantly, the Wiechers-Sport driver missed the second and only dry practice session on Saturday morning, which hampered the team’s set-up for the weekend, but in the wet race one, D’Aste was the only one of the rear-wheel drive BMWs to be able to move up the order in the tricky conditions.

“On the warm-up I did the sixth fastest time overall and the first of the independents’ and the first of the BMWs and I was convinced that the car was good and we had a good set-up,” said D’Aste to TouringCarTimes.

“The problem is starting from 12th position with the hard rain you don’t see anything….but I got a very great start, I pushed very hard for the first laps. I got immediately the right feeling with the set-up and overtook a lot of people, and when I was in sixth position overall behind Alain (Menu), it was stupid to try and overtake him and the car behind was very far away. My car was in a good position without damage for race two, I thought first independent, first BMW, I’ll stay here.”

“In the second race I got a good start, there was a big fight in the first laps but I was able to overtake three cars. We raced in a set-up done in a few minutes because we didn’t have feedback from practice in the dry.”

“I was behind Tiago (Monteiro) in the last laps, he was slower than me but to try to overtake him for only one position…I was second in the independents’, Franz (Engstler) was impossible to catch so (the team) from the box told me to stay there.”

D’Aste was also called to the stewards for the incident at the start which saw Proteam Racing’s Mehdi Bennani and Liqui-Moly Team Engstler driver Kristian Poulsen eliminated from the race. The investigation revealed it was a racing incident and there was no contact between D’Aste and Bennani and no penalties were handed out.

The Italian has now leaped to ninth in the Yokohama Independents’ Trophy standings in only his second race with the Wiechers-Sport team, passing season long entrants Fredy Barth, Yukinori Taniguchi & Aleksei Dudukalo.