Mercedes-AMG’s Head of Motorsport in the DTM, Ulrich Fritz, believes that none of his drivers were going to finish any higher than seventh in the first of Zandvoort’s DTM races.
Scot Paul di Resta crossed the line as the best of the Stuttgart marques cars in seventh, following a difficult qualifying session in which only one of the C63’s made it into the top ten.
A difficult race then followed, with Di Resta the best of the Mercedes drivers ahead of Gary Paffett in eighth.
In the first race since Mercedes announced its withdrawal from the DTM, things could hardly have looked more average for the championship’s most dominant marque, with its only realistic prospect of taking the title, Lucas Auer, finishing down in 15th.
“We were never going to finish any higher than seventh today,” said Fritz. “Hardly any of the drivers made any significant mistakes, which obviously makes it very difficult to overtake on a narrow track like Zandvoort.
“I think what we saw was a highly strategic race. The most surprising aspect was how well the tyres held up.
“For tomorrow, we need to ensure that we qualify further forward. Otherwise, we’re going to have the same problems we had today.”
Di Resta pointed to the fact that none of the championship front runners had a good race as reason to be optimistic, with his and Paffett’s efforts denying Audi’s Rast the chance to secure a bigger points haul and move further away at the top of the standings.
“I don’t think that today’s result shows a clear picture,” said di Resta. “It was a difficult qualifying session, but we’ll regroup tomorrow. The car was very strong, and I think we can probably attack a bit more. Today, we achieved just about all we could have.
“The main thing is that we took some points off Rast by way of damage limitation to help Lucas. Anyway, onwards to tomorrow, which will hopefully be a better day.
“The BMW looks strong here, but our engineers will bang their heads together to maybe come up with something that can help.”