Two top-10 finishes for WINWARD Racing
WWR drivers Maro Engel and Lucas Auer bring their Mercedes-AMG GT3 home 7th and 10th in the DTM Sunday race at the Lausitzring.
The team could not quite repeat the fantastic result of the day before with second and fourth, but Mercedes-AMG Team WINWARD still put in a good showing in the second race of the DTM weekend at the Lausitzring. As on Saturday, Maro Engel (38, Monaco) produced a superb comeback drive, working his way up from 20th to seventh in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the colours of “130 Years of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport” and RAVENOL. Team-mate Lucas Auer (29, Austria) finished tenth in the sister car entered by Mercedes-AMG Team MANN-FILTER and also collected more important championship points.
As in race 1, strong race pace and a perfect pit strategy made Maro Engel’s progress possible. With his lap times staying good, the Monaco resident and his Portuguese race engineer Mauricio Moreira decided to try an “overcut”, staying out on the first set of tyres longer than their direct rivals. The strategy paid off, not least because the WWR pit crew once again delivered two flawless mandatory tyre changes. After the pit window closed, the Munich-born driver was eighth, then passed another rival and skilfully fended off his attacks to the finish.
“I think we got the maximum out of a challenging weekend,” Engel summed up. “My thanks go above all to my crew, and not just because of the great pit stops in both races. After we found a problem with my car this morning, the mechanics had to change the front suspension before the race. In the race the car felt normal again, so I could attack. That is what made the overcut possible in the first place. I’m happy with seventh place, although we know there is a lot of work ahead of us.”
Lucas Auer, meanwhile, is still not having much luck. Blocked at the rolling start by the car ahead, which got away badly, the Tyrolean lost four positions, two of which he made back on the opening lap. The “MANN-FILTER Mamba” then settled into the Lausitzring’s typical train of cars, where there seemed to be no way forward at first. So Auer and his race engineer Thomas Gleibs tried an undercut, a very early pit stop to get the yellow-green Mercedes-AMG GT3 out of traffic. In hindsight this proved less effective than Engel’s late stop, and after the pit window closed, “Luggi”, who was feeling unwell, found himself behind his stablemate.
“Tough qualifying, tough race,” said Auer. “At the start Thiim ahead of me didn’t get away, so I lost a few places. The early-stop strategy unfortunately didn’t work well, even though the tyre changes were all top class. Overall we simply weren’t fast enough.”
WWR team principal Christian Hohenadel found nothing to fault in his team’s performance: “We got out of our package what was possible here. I don’t know what we could have done better as a team. Strategies, pit stops, the driving – in my view everything was right. There just wasn’t any more.”
The next chance of a top result for Mercedes-AMG Team WINWARD comes in just two weeks at Zandvoort in the Netherlands. After his win there last year, Maro Engel in particular has the best memories of the Grand Prix circuit set in the dunes just a few metres from the North Sea coast, which fans and drivers love alike.