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Gary Paffett: “we are slowly making progress”

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Mercedes’ Gary Paffett believes Mercedes has improved on its poor Hockenheim performance at Oschersleben.

The 2005 DTM champion qualified 18th, but while admitting Mercedes can’t hope to fight with Audi and BMW, he said the squad has made progress. Paffett  pointed out team-mate Pascal Wehrlein’s 10th place grid slot as a reference point.

“If you look at Pascal’s speed, you can see that we’ve moved forwards as a team,” said Paffett. ” We are slowly making progress.”

Despite his optimism, Paffett added Mercedes couldn’t have realistically expected to be fighting at the front in today’s qualifying session at Oschersleben, but he was disappointed to end the session in 18th.

“After the last race at Hockenheim, we couldn’t expect to be up among the front-runners today. Still, 18th is not what we had hoped for.”