Gary Paffett cautiously satisfied after retaking the championship lead

Mercedes-AMG driver Gary Paffett was content to be in the lead of the championship after the eighth round at the Nürburgring after finishing fifth on Sunday’s race after a problem at his obligatory tyre change.

Paffett qualified in second place on the grid, and was third behind Audi’s René Rast and team-mate Lucas Auer in the initial stages. When Auer was spun off the track, Paffett closed the gap to Rast, challenging for the lead.

On the 20th lap of the race, however, Paffett came into the pits for his obligatory pit stop, taking nearly twelve seconds to complete it after the right rear tyre got stuck.

“I heard I lost in the region of ten seconds in the pit stop, and I finished seven behind René (Rast), so I genuinely think we had a chance to win the race today and that’s what makes it more frustrating,” Paffett told TouringCarTimes.

Paffett had to wait then for BMW drivers Joel Eriksson and Marco Wittmann to go past as they were coming down the pit lane and to avoid an unsafe release.

“When you are in the car you can hear the tyres and you can see the guys moving,” he said. “You are waiting and ready to go, you are expecting to go, but it’s taking time, time and time. As a driver, you look in the mirror and you see the other cars coming and you are sitting there and you can do nothing. The guys made a mistake and now feel pretty bad about it but now I feel bad about them because it was made worse by having to wait in the pit lane.”

The Briton returned to the track in the virtual seventh position, making up two places to finish fifth, although Paffett thought he could have even have aimed higher.

“I used up quite a lot of the tyres and managed to hang on fifth place,” he said. “Actually, I was catching Bruno (Spengler). The pace of the car was really good today, we made a step forward last night, and that’s what is more frustrating.”

“We are working hard to improve our pit stops and make sure these things don’t happen again, because when something happens that costs you five positions it’s tough.”

Paffett leaves Nürburgring with a slender two-point advantage over team-mate Paul di Resta in the championship, and the turnaround in the standings is a small consolation after losing a bigger result.

“The fight with Paul is going fine, because I came into this race this weekend second in the championship and I’m going away first, so this weekend it’s a good weekend in that respect,” he said. “Today could have been bigger about it, second place was easy and we could have won, so we had a chance to extend the points’ gap a bit more. But I’m ahead of Paul and I was faster than him in most sessions.”

The Briton also doesn’t think that Rast is a threat for his championship aspirations, despite scoring three victories and 117 points in the last seven races.

“René is the next question and the run he’s putting on is quite impressive,” he said. “Today I was six-thousandths behind him in qualifying and my theoretical (lap) is better, so we match his pace in qualifying and, if you look at the time I lost in the pitlane, I think we could have given René a run for the win and, so, maybe there wouldn’t be so much of a question of René coming for the championship.”

Paffett now has 206 points in his account, two more than di Resta and 57 ahead of Rast, with Mortara further behind 68 points adrift.

Mercedes-AMG leads the manufacturers’ standings with 801 points, despite being the least scoring manufacturer at the Nürburgring. BMW Motorsport is second, 270 points behind, with Audi Sport a distant third with a 436-point deficit.