A frustrating Sunday for WINWARD Racing
In the second race of the DTM meeting at Zandvoort, Lucas Auer and David Schumacher went home without points in their Mercedes-AMG GT3.
The second DTM race weekend of the year at Zandvoort ended with a disappointing result for Mercedes-AMG Team WINWARD. While David Schumacher (21, Salzburg) narrowly missed the points in 16th in the Ravenol Mercedes-AMG GT3, team-mate Lucas Auer had to park his Knaus car after just one lap following contact at the start.
The German-Texan team’s botched Sunday began in the turbulent morning qualifying, which was interrupted. Schumacher in particular, who found himself 21st on the grid, was fed up: “Blocked three times by a rival and then the red flag – I’m lost for words.” Auer, in 15th, was not exactly thrilled either.
The one-hour race on the 4.3-kilometre track in the Dutch dunes gave little reason for enthusiasm either. The race had only just started when it was already over for Auer. “There was contact in the scramble, the radiator broke, end of story,” was the brief account of the 2022 runner-up.
Schumacher drove a good race but narrowly missed the points in 16th. “We weren’t fast enough to make decisive progress, especially as we lacked top speed on the straights,” explained the Austria-based driver. “After the very good stop it went pretty well for a few laps, but then the performance dropped. We have to analyse why, because the car actually felt good.”
WWR team principal Christian Hohenadel encouraged his team: “We’ve all been around long enough to know that motorsport always brings ups and downs. Our main focus now must be to deliver our performance better in qualifying. Then the results will come back. Even so, I have to compliment my guys: the pit stop was very strong again, which also shows that the boys have a great mentality. The word ‘give up’ doesn’t exist in their vocabulary. And that’s why I have no doubt that we will fight our way back to where we belong.”
In just two weeks the DTM community starts its third event of the season at Nuremberg’s Norisring. The 2.1-kilometre street circuit beside the Dutzendteich always delivers plenty of spectacle.
The WINWARD team, meanwhile, doesn’t even have time for a short breather: from Zandvoort the team from Altendiez went straight on to Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, around 300 kilometres to the south-east. There, next weekend, the CrowdStrike Spa 24 Hours, the biggest GT3 race in the world, takes place. No fewer than 71 cars are entered for the twice-round-the-clock race, which counts towards the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS. On the 7.0-kilometre Ardennes rollercoaster, WINWARD Racing fields two Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the Gold Cup for the trios David Schumacher/Marius Zug/Miklas Born (number 157) and Russell Ward/Philip Ellis/Indy Dontje (number 57).