Robert Wickens says catching “Zandvoort master” Wittmann will be tough

Robert Wickens moved to within ten points of BMW’s Marco Wittmann following his win on Saturday, but the Canadian says his chances of leaving the Dutch circuit with the championship lead are slight with the German’s skill around the Zandvoort circuit earning him second in the race.

Wickens led from start to finish in his HWA Mercedes C63, only challenged in the early stages of the race while within the one-second DRS zone, but was able to break free following the slow zone deployed as Augusto Farfus’s BMW was recovered from the gravel trap on lap nine.

“Even starting from pole it’s never easy to win in DTM,” said Wickens. “I had an average start, so I defended pretty early to make sure Marco wasn’t getting by, and then from there Marco was just able to stay within DRS, but thankfully after the slow zone I was able to break the DRS (window) and from there just focus on myself and run a mistake-free race and settle into a good rhythm.

“It definitely helped that Christian (Vietoris) was behind Marco giving him a pretty hard time so I was able to pull out a healthy gap and just manage things to the end.”

Wickens has been on the pace all weekend so far, and is hoping for a repeat of today’s results in qualifying and the 60-minute race on Sunday, but admits overhauling the points gap to Wittmann will be a tough task.

“We just have to do our job. Today we did the best we could and Marco did a good job limiting the gain for me,” he said to TouringCarTimes. “He’s a bit of a Zandvoort master. I looked at some of his highlights from the last four years just to look at some starts and I think he’s never been off the front two rows. He’s strong at every track but especially here, so we’re going to try and do everything to close the gap.

“The dream is to outscore him by more than ten points, but we just have to do the best job we can but we can’t control what he does.”