Daniel Juncadella scores the first DTM points for Aston Martin

Daniel Juncadella drove a complicated race to finish ninth today in the season opener at Hockenheim, scoring the first two points for R-Motorsport and Aston Martin in the DTM. The Vantage DTM proved itself competitive under difficult conditions, although technical issues prevented the team from a better result.

Juncadella started 11th on the grid, feeling that he hadn’t extracted the most from his car in qualifying due to a tyre pressure issue. The Spaniard pitted at the end of the first lap, one of the few first drivers in the race to do so.

“I don’t like focussing on the results, but I’m very happy with my work today,” Juncadella told TouringCarTimes.

The Spaniard’s lap times dropped, with Juncadella unable to get the tyres to work: “The first ten laps were very difficult as I didn’t have any temperature in the tyres, and it was like racing on ice. I started with new tyres and then changed to the ones used in qualifying, the first ones worked well but the second set didn’t.”

Juncadella managed to stay in the race and take advantage of the late stoppers to finish ninth and score two points. He only had words of praise for his team: “The team has worked really hard during the last four months and I must admit that I haven’t had a single problem with the car, not a mechanical failure, and that’s a big result. Obviously, we want better results but we must take it one step at the time and continue working like this.”

Jake Dennis had a competitive day, qualifying in sixth position for the grid and ran in the points for most of the race, until a clutch issue at the pit stop caused the Briton to lose ground.

“We performed really well in qualifying. In the race I was comfortable looking at a P6 or P7, but a small issue in the pit stop caused us some positions. It’s frustrating but we still finished in 11th place, close to the points,” the Briton told TouringCarTimes.

Team principal at R-Motorsport Florian Kamelger was encouraged by the results: “We got the first ever historic point for Aston Martin, so we are happy. Obviously, after such a strong qualifying for Paul and Jake the expectations in the team and everybody were high but, as we can see, the conditions were really difficult,” Kamelger told TouringCarTimes.

Ferdinand Habsburg retired on the second lap and Paul di Resta did so shortly after his pit stop, Kamelger explained: “We had a message regarding Ferdinand’s (Habsburg) engine which we took seriously and retired the car for safety. And Paul had a brake problem, which was a safety issue for us, so he also had to retire.

“Jake had a loose clutch pedal, so when he came for his pit stop he had to pull away from there without a clutch and that’s why he stalled. So it wasn’t a straight forward race.

“We took our first points and we are really happy about that. I would have rather seen four cars take the chequered flag, but I’m happy about the result.”