Paul di Resta: “It was a weekend to forget”

R-Motorsport endured a tough weekend at Misano that reflected the hard truth about a lack of development in the Aston Martin Vantage DTM, with the Swiss team leaving a meeting empty handed for the first time this season.

Despite only three months having passed since the car’s track debut back in March, the steep learning curve for the team – and a general lack of speed – worked against the team in the hot and difficult conditions in Misano, with an abrasive track surface that rendered their creative tyre strategies fruitless.

Paul di Resta in particular had a tough weekend with two retirements and was hit again with mechanical issues in race two that forced him to park his Vantage DTM on the track side after just six laps.

“That was a weekend to forget,” said di Resta. “Only yesterday, we had the retirement shortly before the end of the race, and now today, we’ve had had another problem with the car.

Daniel Juncadella, who started from 16th on the grid, pitted at the end of the first lap to cover a safety car eventuality that never came. The Spaniard struggled for most of the race to finish in 14th place.

“Because I made that early pit stop after the first lap, I had to complete 38 laps on the same set of tyres,” he said. “So unfortunately, the tyres were already gone after 20 laps, which made the car very difficult to drive.“

Jake Dennis ran almost the opposite strategy and was the last driver to change tyres, managing to briefly lead the race before coming into the pits.

“We made a late stop, just like last time at Zolder, in the hope that we might benefit from a possible safety car,” said the Briton. “In a normal race like today, it’s is not the quickest strategy, but we took the risk to maybe make it into the points. We came close, but unfortunately it didn’t pay off.“

Team principal Dr. Florian Kamelger was pragmatic and vowed to continue working to move forward.

“We knew that Misano would be a very difficult weekend for us,” he said. “The two races here showed that we still have a lot of catching up to do. We now need to roll our sleeves up and work systematically on developing our technical package.“

The team is expected to complete three days of testing in the weeks prior to the next round at Norisring in four weeks’ time.