Pascal Wehrlein: “It was important not to make any errors”

Pascal Wehrlein’s impressive display in the variable conditions this afternoon shows how much his talent has been able to flourish in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) so far, along with his second victory in the series so far.

The 20-year-old, who has been extensively involved with a demanding Formula 1 testing schedule, realized that it was a tough task ahead to gamble on slick tyres in the early goings of the first race.

“It’s very easy to make mistakes on a street circuit like this, then your race is over. And so, the race was fairly exciting, particularly at the start,” he explained, as stablemates Robert Wickets, Gary Paffett and Christian Vietoris were catching the youngster in the latter stages of the 40-minute race.

“My engineers made the right call to send me out on slicks to begin with. Both strategies worked well in the end, even if my tyres degraded a bit more, as I’d been running them right from the start.”

Wehrlein is now clearly another person that is in the hunt for the drivers’ title, as the Formula 3 graduate is just one point behind Audi Sport’s Mattias Ekström and Edoardo Mortara ahead of tomorrow’s race.

The Worndorf-based driver is clearly making his mark in this series, especially with the compliment paid by last year’s race winner Robert Wickens on how well he coped with driving on slicks.

However, the Canadian expressed by Twitter that he is still very hungry for a win in tomorrow’s 60-minute race:

I’ve definitely had worst days in DTM! Pretty satisfied with P2, but I’m hungry for the win tomorrow. Mercedes AMG DTM

— Robert Wickens (@robertwickens) June 27, 2015