DTM Lausitz: Mortara wins, Müller misses the mark
ALPTRAUM FOR AUDI In Saturday's DTM race at the Lausitzring, Edoardo Mortara took his first victory with Mercedes thanks to a super strategy. But Nico Müller caused a crash. On Pentecost Sunday, both were left without points. In ninth place and therefore the fastest Audi driver on the grid, Nico Müller had secured his first points in his fifth [...]
Ninth on the grid and therefore the fastest Audi driver, Nico Müller had set his sights on his first points in his fifth DTM season on Saturday. But after just a few seconds, his race ended with a huge bang.
After the driver from Bern had stalled the engine of an Audi RS 5, fellow Audi driver Jamie Green, who had started from the very back of the grid, crashed blindly into the rear of his car.
Nico Müller: "I tried to reel off the normal start program. But the revised clutch, which I hadn't practiced starting with before, closed more than normal. This caused the engine to stall. Unfortunately, Jamie couldn't see me standing and therefore couldn't avoid me. I feel incredibly sorry for him and for the whole Audi team for what happened."
Things got even worse for Audi, as René Rast rolled vehemently on the first lap after the safety car phase and Loïc Duval, who was involved, also retired.
Fortunately, Rast was uninjured, just like Müller and Green before him. But as a result, Audi only had two of the six cars in the race, and none of them in the front field.
Italian anthem for Swiss winners
After the stop and restart, the actual race only lasted 20 minutes. Everyone also had to complete their mandatory tire change - and in this respect, the Mercedes team had the best timing.
Edoardo Mortara had started seventh and took the lead after his pit stop. The man from Geneva brought this safely to the finish - his first victory with Mercedes, his ninth in the DTM overall.
The only fly in the ointment from a Swiss perspective: although he has been racing with an ASS license for three years and is actually considered Swiss, the Italian anthem continued to be played at the award ceremony. The DTM simply wants an Italian in the field...
Edoardo Mortara: "A special victory for me - I'm over the moon. We struggled a lot in 2017, but things are going much better for me this season. We had a great strategy today, the car was good and the pit stop was great too. My start wasn't quite perfect, but everything went fantastically well after that."
A Sunday to forget
Things went less well for "Edo" in the second race, which he finished just outside the points in eleventh place. Nico Müller also came away empty-handed once again, although the Whitsun Sunday started promisingly for the Bernese driver in the perfectly repaired Abt-Audi with the best time in the third free practice session.
But in qualifying, his team used a slightly too aggressive strategy, which only resulted in 13th place on the grid. This meant that Müller was still the second-best Audi driver with the prospect of scoring points. But nothing came of it.
Nico Müller: "We didn't get the tires into the optimum working window in qualifying. In the race, the start went well this time, but I soon had a contact after the early tire change. The damage to the car was so bad that I couldn't get off the line properly and lost a few positions."
Frustrating start to the season for Müller
His conclusion after the second DTM weekend of 2018 is correspondingly sobering.
Nico Müller: "I was the fastest Audi in qualifying on Saturday and the second fastest on Sunday. But we are still lacking something compared to BMW and Mercedes at the moment. We made some small progress, but now have a lot of work ahead of us. To be without points after the first two weekends is frustrating..."
The second race was won by Gary Paffett in a Mercedes ahead of Marco Wittmann in a BMW. Timo Glock in a BMW leads the championship by one point from Paffett (72 to 71).
