Fresh from his win at the Total 24 Hours of Spa last week, Austria’s Philipp Eng was ready to get back to the current Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters campaign at Brands Hatch this weekend.
But the BMW driver admitted to TouringCars.Net post race one that his fifth place finish was under threat from Gary Paffett, due to the aggressive laps post pit-stop that hurt his Hankook tyres, particularly on the left front.
“I got the bill for it in the last seven/eight laps when Gary closed the gap again. He was close once but everything was under control. But he’s not the guy you want to see in your rear view mirror,” explained the 28-year-old, who now moves up to seventh in the standings on 77 points.
The new challenge for all drivers has not just been exciting, but it has also shown that the line of staying on track to having an incident is incredibly finite.
“This place is incredible in a GT car, but the first couple of laps in a DTM car was a handful,” said the Austrian, who secured fifth from Paffett by just 0.387 seconds at the finish line.
“I felt like Lucas [Auer] after my second run, where I took a lot of risk especially in turn five and six. At that moment, you don’t think about going off, but I had a small moment where I felt that it could have also gone horribly wrong. [laughs]
“So the line between a good, clean lap and a complete write-off is very small. But in the end, it worked out well, as we had a good car in qualifying. I pulled out a good enough lap that was good enough to put me P4, which made me happy.”