Hard-earned points for WINWARD Racing
In a highly turbulent DTM Sunday race at the Sachsenring, David Schumacher and Lucas Auer finish in the points.
Mercedes-AMG Team WINWARD ended a difficult race weekend at the Sachsenring with two points finishes. David Schumacher (21, Salzburg) drove his Ravenol Mercedes-AMG GT3 to eleventh after a turbulent race. The Sunday race on the 3.6-kilometre track near Hohenstein-Ernstthal was even more chaotic for team-mate Lucas Auer (28, Kufstein), who still secured a championship point in 15th in the Knaus sister car.
As on the day before, morning qualifying did not go to plan for either WWR car. Auer and Schumacher, whose car needed a brake disc change during the 20-minute qualifying session, found themselves only 14th and 19th on the grid – and promptly got caught up after the start in a scramble that ended in retirement for five GT3 cars and a red-flag stoppage for the rest of the field.
Fortunately for the two WINWARD drivers, because their Mercedes-AMG GT3 had not survived the various contacts undamaged either and could at least be patched up during the roughly 20-minute interruption.
For David Schumacher, the race after the restart went quite well. With another very fast mandatory pit stop and strong lap times, the Austria-based driver worked his way forward position by position and crossed the line in a good eleventh place. “Today’s race was very similar to yesterday’s,” Schumacher analysed. “It was difficult to use the grip of the new tyres, so we were too far back on the grid again. The long-run pace was really OK. The stoppage helped us a bit, because my car was damaged too. I struggled with understeer the whole race, but I’m not unhappy with the result.”
Lucas Auer could not say the same. The hard contact on the opening lap was followed by two more, the first of which led to a time-consuming trip through the gravel and the second to a harsh penalty of three penalty laps, costing around ten seconds in total. In the end the Tyrolean could be satisfied with a point for 15th. “That was a really brutal weekend for me,” sighed Auer. “I’ve rarely had so many problems at once. Now we have to work through everything calmly. There’s a lot of work ahead of us.”
WWR team principal Christian Hohenadel’s verdict sounded similar: “We sold ourselves short this weekend. We will use the days until the next race to analyse the Sachsenring weekend down to the last detail, because this haul is not our standard. Even so, praise goes to the whole team – it was definitely not a lack of effort, as today’s strong pit stops also showed. We want to come back stronger, and we will.”
The seventh race weekend of the 2023 DTM takes place on 23/24 September at the Red Bull Ring near Spielberg in Styria.