A botched DTM start for WINWARD Racing
In the first race of the 2023 DTM season at Oschersleben, the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Lucas Auer and David Schumacher missed the points.
The 2023 DTM season began with a disappointment for Mercedes-AMG Team WINWARD. In the Saturday race of the opening weekend at Oschersleben, the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Lucas Auer and David Schumacher finished 16th and 18th, narrowly missing the points.
A difficult race day for the Mercedes-AMG drivers was already looming in morning qualifying. David Schumacher put his Ravenol car 16th on the grid as the best-placed representative of the three-pointed star. Austrian Lucas Auer in the Knaus sister car ended up two places behind his team-mate.
In the race, too, the WWR duo could not make a decisive impact on the 3.6-kilometre track in the Magdeburg Börde. Both drivers struggled with a balance that was not ideal on their 550 hp cars. Schumacher, initially the best-placed Mercedes-AMG driver in the early phase, lost ground on lap 11 with a brief trip off the track and a few laps later with a penalty lap for an infringement during his otherwise clean tyre change. “Today was a completely botched race. We will work through everything carefully and hopefully be better placed tomorrow,” commented the 21-year-old Salzburg resident.
Auer also reported a car that was difficult to drive. Especially in the first laps after his also good mandatory pit stop, the runner-up lost ground. “The car was very difficult to drive. At first I even feared a puncture,” said the 28-year-old from Kufstein. “We all have to take a hard look at ourselves today and admit that we didn’t do a perfect job.”
WWR team principal Christian Hohenadel made no secret of his disappointment: “We didn’t manage to get the maximum out of our package today. And you simply have to do that to run at the front in this top-class field. The competitiveness in the DTM is more extreme than ever. In qualifying we were only half a second off with both cars, and we were on the eighth and ninth rows of the grid. We mustn’t throw in the towel now. Instead we have to analyse exactly what wasn’t perfect today and do better tomorrow.”
The Sunday race of the DTM weekend at Oschersleben again starts at 1.30 pm. ProSieben broadcasts live from 1 pm.