One driver that is determined to keep a good run of form into the penultimate round of the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters is Audi Sport’s Edoardo Mortara, who is the only other driver apart from points leader Marco Wittmann, to have taken three wins this year.
The series heads to the 4.381-km circuit, just outside the Hungarian capital of Budapest, replacing Oschersleben on this year’s calendar after a year’s hiatus.
Mortara, along with Team Rosberg’s Jamie Green, are two of the Ingolstadt ranks that have a chance of threatening Wittmann’s chance to take a second drivers’ title for BMW.
Time does help in terms of gaining confidence in the car, especially with the pure pace that the RS5 DTM has had, since its introduction to replace the A5 that Audi brought into the series in the “New Era.”
But Mortara is feeling a lot more confident ahead of this weekend, rather than the DTM’s return to Hungary two years ago, where he felt he was struggling.
“But since then, my confidence in the car has grown a lot and things are going really well at the moment,” said the Italian, who is 33 points behind Wittmann with four races remaining.
“We need another good weekend to reduce the gap to him. My title chances are intact and we’re going to battle up until the very end.”
Even with qualifying being an issue for Audi Sport, Head of DTM Dieter Gass says that all efforts are being focused towards getting as many of their drivers as far up the grid as possible.
“It’s clear that on the Budapest weekend we need to achieve more points than our competitors in order to put ourselves in a good position for the final attack at Hockenheim,” he explained, as Audi are still in the hunt for all three titles this year.
“Especially at the Hungaroring, this will be particularly difficult because that’s exactly what we were struggling with there in 2014. However, our subsequent race performance in 2014, with six cars in the points, was very promising. That, plus our strong Sunday race at the Nürburgring, is what we can build on.”