Robert Wickens at a loss to explain lack of performance at the Nürburgring

Team HWA driver Robert Wickens struggled with pace today at the Nürburgring, despite Mercedes AMG having a competitive package. The Canadian was only ninth in the race, losing ground in the championship to BMW’s Marco Wittmann.

The C63 DTMs courted the top positions all day, with Christian Vietoris being a close second in second free practice and Lucas Auer the fastest man in qualifying. In the race, both Daniel Juncadella and Paul Di Resta got good performance out of their cars.

The situation was very different for Robert Wickens, who was hoping to come closer to the championship lead ahead of this weekend’s event. The Canadian struggled to qualify, starting back in 13th place, and went on to be only ninth in the race.

“I honestly don’t know what went wrong today” Wickens told TouringCarTimes. “We didn’t seem to be able to get it right in qualifying, and everything went down from there.”

Asked whether any of the first lap contacts had damaged his Mercedes, Wickens said: “I don’t think that was the reason and, if I had any damage, it wasn’t apparent to me. I had a good start, but all day we struggled with oversteering and we couldn’t get the tyres to work. We need to sit down with the data and work out where we had problems today.”

Wickens still managed to score two points but, with Marco Wittmann’s victory, the gap between the two has increased. The Canadian is still second in the standings, but 35 points adrift from the BMW driver. “We still got two points which are very important, but it’s a shame we couldn’t score higher. Tonight we will work on the issues and come back to fight again tomorrow. Everything can change and we will continue to work hard.”