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Mercedes celebrates ‘splendid’ result at Norisring

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Mercedes AMG DTM took a dominant victory today at the Norisring, with Pascal Wehrlein leading team mates Robert Wickens, Gary Paffett and Christian Vietoris in a 1-2-3-4 result for the manufacturer.

The result continues Mercedes good track record at the Norisring, where they have won 13 times since 2000.

A shower fell over the circuit moments before the race start. Pascal Wehrlein took a gamble and went out on slick tyres, whilst his team mates did so on wets. The rounds of pit stops became necessary 15 minutes into the race, when the teams got confirmation that no more rain was expected, forcing everyone to come in. That moment allowed Wehrlein to take the race lead.

Despite struggling in the last few laps, as his tyres had been used since the green lights, Wehrlein was able to hold off the attacks from Robert Wickens. Wehrlein, who achieved his second victory in the DTM, was happy after a difficult race: “My engineers made the right call to send me out on slicks to begin with. Both strategies worked well in the end, even if my tyres degraded a bit more, as I’d been running them right from the start. It was very tricky initially to keep the car on track on the slicks. It’s very easy to make mistakes on a street circuit like this, then your race is over. And so, the race was fairly exciting, particularly at the start. Robert and Gary were a little faster towards the end. Consequently, it was important not to make any errors, otherwise they would have had me.”

Gary Paffet challenged Vietoris first for the lead, and then Wickens for the second place, but was third in the end. In his mind, Paffett knows the importance of a good team effort: “The team did a super job, though, and made the right calls. We were faster towards the end, which enabled us to take third place.”

Mücke Motorsport’s Daniel Juncadella was in the points, having finished third. He drove a difficult race, with an untimely pit stop: “We had to make a pit stop and change to slicks. Overall, the race went quite well, but my car was set up more for wet weather. That’s why I was a bit slower on the straights than the opposition, which then made it more difficult for me to overtake the other cars.”

Ullrich Fritz, Head of DTM, was pleased with the result, but insists on continue working hard: “ Both the team and the drivers did a terrific job today and laid the foundation for this success. But we must not rest on our laurels. Tomorrow is another day and another race.”

The DTM is back on track tomorrow morning with the warm up at 9:50 CEST (GMT + 2).