Audi on slow zone controversy: “This mustn’t happen again.”

Audi Sport have said the championship needs to work hard to ensure that nothing like the situation on Saturday, in which Edoardo Mortara and Nico Müller were incorrectly handed drive-through penalties for allegedly speeding in the slow zone must not happen again, but also say it was right to serve the penalties which were handed to them.

Mortara was running in sixth position when he was given a drive-through penalty in Race 1. The officials had judged he had exceeded the 80km/h speed limit during the slow zone which was implemented after BMW’s Augusto Farfus had crashed out at the Masterkurve, but on reviewing the data after the race, it was discovered there were discrepancies which likely meant the Italian had not broken the speed limit after all.

The loss of at least eight points means Mortara leaves Zandvoort third in the standings, with head of Audi DTM Dieter Gass saying the championship must learn from the error.

“That was very tough one for us to swallow, but we had to accept the decision…even though Edo was immediately very vocal on the radio that he didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

“We need to make sure nothing like this happens again in the future.”

During Race 2, the officials confirmed no slow zone penalties would be handed out during the race, with the GPS system requiring checks before it could be used in earnest in a racing situation. When asked if they would question a mid-race penalty in the future, Gass replied that Audi would not do anything differently.

“At the end of the day, when you have a decision like that, you have to respect it,” said Gass to TouringCarTimes.

“We couldn’t have carried on and taken a black flag which logically would have happened after three laps, and then possibly had the licence taken away from the driver.

“That wasn’t an option and for the sport in general it’s not an option, as if somebody did that and got away with it, nobody would ever respect the drive-throughs anymore.”