Mercedes drivers Di Resta, Juncadella and Vietoris secure positions 4, 5 and 6 respectively
Best result of season for Mercedes junior Daniel Juncadella in P5.
Paul Di Resta, Mercedes AMG DTM-Team HWA DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupe
XPB Images
Mercedes-Benz DTM driver Paul Di Resta (Mercedes DTM AMG C-Coupé) placed fourth in the seventh DTM race at the Nürburgring. The 2010 DTM champion crossed the finish line with a lead of 0.902 seconds on fellow Mercedes driver Daniel Juncadella (Petronas Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) in front of 80,000 spectators at the race weekend. The Spanish Mercedes junior in fifth place secured his best result of the season.
Christian Vietoris (Original-Teile Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) moved up three positions during the race to cross the finish line in sixth place behind his two fellow Mercedes drivers Di Resta and Juncadella. Robert Wickens (FREE MAN'S WORLD AMG Mercedes C-Coupé) finished the seventh race of the season in ninth place, just ahead of Pascal Wehrlein (gooix Mercedes AMG C-Coupé). The Mercedes junior took the final point in tenth position.
After 49 laps, Gary Paffett (EURONICS Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) and Vitaly Petrov (DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) took the chequered flag in P16 and P18 respectively.
The next race: The eighth round of the 2014 DTM season takes place from September 13th-14th at the Lausitzring.
Comments after the Race
Paul Di Resta (28, Scotland, DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) 4th: “Great performance by Marco Wittmann. Well done. We can be satisfied with fourth place. We had a very strong car today, especially on the option tyres. Our pace was very good as a result. My thanks go to the team for their excellent work in preparing the car. From a team perspective, this was a good race for us today and at a circuit which we thought wouldn’t really suit our car. So, we seem to be on the right track. Now we need to continue pushing and do everything to go on improving.”
Daniel Juncadella (23, Spain, Petronas Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) 5th: “At last, a good result for me this season. I drove a flawless race. I took a bit of risk at the start of the race by taking an outside line, but that paid off. I enjoyed the overtaking here, because it’s not very easy to do on this track. Edoardo Mortara held Paul and me up, which cost us any chance of a podium. But fifth place is good anyway – it’s my second-best result to date in the DTM.”
Christian Vietoris (25, Germany, Original-Teile Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) 6th: “All things considered, that was a good home race for me. The weekend got off to a rather mixed start on Saturday. Qualifying went OK, and in the race itself, I was able to move up the field by several positions and score a few championship points. Even so, I feel that there was the potential for more. The situation with Augusto Farfus on the first lap unfortunately cost me several places. But overall, that was a decent weekend from my perspective.”
Robert Wickens (25, Canada, FREE MAN’S WORLD Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) 9th: “I'm happy with ninth place in view of the circumstances and the way the race went. We achieved a good team result today with five Mercedes-Benz drivers in the Top Ten, which makes me feel quite optimistic. However, I personally wish I’d done even better.”
Pascal Wehrlein (19, Germany, gooix Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) 10th: “All in all, I’m satisfied with my race. If you start from 18th on the grid and then finish in the points, you must have done something right. I was able to gain positions from the very start of race, and the successful pit stop strategy meant that I managed to gain several more. My target for the last three races has to be consistently scoring points and possibly finishing on the podium.”
Gary Paffett (33, England, EURONICS Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) 16th: “I had a good start and gained quite a few places. Then I was right behind Pascal and had a wheel-to-wheel battle with Timo Glock. He pushed me in turn three and we went side by side through turn five. He then hit me in turn six. Unfortunately, my car was so badly damaged as a result that I lost a lot of downforce at the rear for the rest of the race, destroying my race.”
Vitaly Petrov (29, Russia, DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) 18th: “Unfortunately, I had rather too much wheel spin at the start of the race, which meant I didn’t get off the line at all well and I lost a lot of time. Then I had to attack hard to regain the places I had lost. That was a lot of fun. In the middle of the race, I clipped a kerb and spun round. It was my fault, and it cost me several seconds.”
Wolfgang Schattling, Head of Motorsport Marketing & Communications: “Five cars in the Top Ten, that's good team result for us, especially considering our grid positions. Of course, we were hoping in the end for a podium finish, but unfortunately, it wasn’t quite meant to be. We’re sorry about the situation with Robert. Drivers usually do not brake at this point. He had no chance. We had an idea before the weekend that the Nürburgring would not play to our cars’ strengths. Taken from that viewpoint, we can be satisfied with the progress we’ve made and with the overall result.”
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