Pascal Wehrlein starts from a grid position in Top 10

The DTM is being staged for the 15th time this weekend at the Motorsport Arena Oschersleben. This Saturday afternoon, Mercedes Junior Pascal Wehrlein (gooix Mercedes AMG C-Coupé) posted a lap time of 1:20.668 minutes to qualify in tenth position for the second race of the internationally popular touring car series.

Fellow Mercedes-Benz drivers Christian Vietoris (Original-Teile Mercedes AMG C-Coupé / 1:21.082 mins) and Gary Paffett (EURONICS Mercedes AMG C-Coupé / 1:21.322 mins) will be in grid positions 17 and 18 respectively in Sunday’s race.

The other Mercedes-Benz drivers Robert Wickens (FREE MAN'S WORLD Mercedes AMG C-Coupé / 1:21.595 mins), Paul Di Resta (DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupé / 1:21.795 mins), Daniel Juncadella (Petronas Mercedes AMG C-Coupé / 1:21.915 mins) and Vitaly Petrov (DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupé / 1:22.132 mins) finished in positions 20 to 23 respectively.

Looking ahead to the race: The second race of the 2014 DTM season starts on Sunday at 1:30 pm (live on ARD TV, from 1:15 pm onwards). The race is held over 51 laps, which equates to a total distance of 188.496 km. Miguel Molina (Audi / 1:20.007 mins) will start from pole position.

Pascal Wehrlein (19, Germany, gooix Mercedes AMG C-Coupé - Tenth, 1:20.668): “A tough qualifying, but given the circumstances, I’m satisfied with tenth position on the grid as best-placed Mercedes-Benz driver. After all, I was able to improve by five places compared to the first qualifying session of the season at Hockenheim. Now we have to analyse the data and continue to work hard. It was obvious that we wouldn’t be able to completely turn around the situation in less than two weeks since the last race. There’s still a long way to go. Anything can happen, as always, if it rains tomorrow. Should it remain dry, I will still do everything I possibly can, but then things will be more difficult for us.”

Christian Vietoris (25, Germany, Original-Teile Mercedes AMG C-Coupé - 17th, 1:21.082): “We’ve managed to improve our performance compared to Hockenheim, even though this isn’t reflected in the actual position. The positive aspect is that we’ve been able to reduce the gap to the top. But just like last time, we have a difficult situation going into the race. Even so, it may be possible to salvage a point or two tomorrow, especially with the weather that’s been forecast.”

Gary Paffett (33, England, EURONICS Mercedes AMG C-Coupé - 18th, 1:21.322): “After the last race at Hockenheim, we couldn’t expect to be up among the front-runners today. Still, P18 is not what we had hoped for. We’ve developed the car further for Oschersleben and tried a few different setups in free practice. But then in qualifying, we didn’t find the optimal car balance. However, if you look at Pascal’s speed, you can see that we’ve moved forwards as a team. The race will not be easy, but we are slowly making progress and will try to finish in the points.”

Robert Wickens (25, Canada, FREE MAN’S WORLD Mercedes AMG C-Coupé - 20th, 1:21.595): “Qualifying didn’t quite go as we had imagined. I wanted to raise my performance compared with Hockenheim, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that. Obviously, I’m not happy about starting from 20th on the grid, but I’ll be doing my best to finish the race a few positions higher.”

Paul Di Resta (28, Scotland, DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupé - 21st, 1:21.795): “It was not an easy qualifying for me. I had quite a lot of traffic on my first stint and was then also unlucky when Timo Glock spun off in front of me on my best lap, that completely ruined my lap, unfortunately. We have to analyse exactly where we stand, because something was wrong with the car as well, which caused me problems with balance that I didn’t have in practice.”

Daniel Juncadella (23, Spain, Petronas Mercedes AMG C-Coupé - 22nd, 1:21.915): “For me, it somehow feels as if the race weekend hasn’t even begun yet. Technical problems meant that I was only able to complete three clear laps in this morning’s free practice session. Now, I’ve only managed to put in another eight in Q1. I’ve tried my hardest but was unable to do any better in the circumstances.”

Vitaly Petrov (29, Russia, DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupé - 23rd, 1:22.132): “We made good progress in free practice. The car felt much better than it did in Hockenheim and I could familiarize myself with the track. So I was really looking forward to qualifying, but then something changed and I could no longer drive cleanly around the turns. Maybe it was the setup, or perhaps the weather even. We now need to analyse what happened and prepare for tomorrow. Of course, I'm disappointed, because as I said, I had a good feeling after the practice session and hoped for more from qualifying.”

Wolfgang Schattling, Head of DTM Management: “Congratulations to Audi and to Miguel Molina on securing pole position. As for us, though, we have no cause for satisfaction with our result. At least Pascal made it through to the Top Ten, which represents a small step forward and shows what a quality driver he is. But on the other hand, we are in a sort of transitional phase in which we are seeking to analyse and overhaul the structures of our DTM involvement. We knew from the start that we wouldn’t be able to make any quantum leaps in performance over the two weeks since the season opener at Hockenheim. We’re now going to re-evaluate the situation and try to get the maximum possible from tomorrow’s race.”

Mercedes-Benz