Damage limitation at WINWARD Racing
With eighth place in the Sunday race at the Red Bull Ring, Maro Engel loses only a little ground in the DTM title fight. Lucas Auer retires early.
The Mercedes-AMG Team WINWARD suffered a small setback in the fight for the 2024 DTM title at the Red Bull Ring. After a superb Saturday race with second and seventh places for Maro Engel (39, Monaco) and Lucas Auer (30, Kufstein), a reclassification of the cars changed the balance of power the following day. In the end, Engel limited the damage with eighth place in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 designed in the colours of “130 Years of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport” and RAVENOL, and with two races left he remains third in the standings, 20 points behind. Auer had to park his “Mamba”, entered by Mercedes-AMG Team MANN-FILTER, early while running ninth with a puncture on the left rear.
That it would be a difficult day for the Mercedes-AMG aces had already become clear in morning qualifying. Grid positions 10 for Auer and 13 for Engel promised hard work in the race. After skilfully manoeuvring through the chaos of the first lap, the two WWR cars came past start and finish in seventh and tenth and then fought hard battles for position with their rivals. While Engel made it to the finish unscathed and collected valuable points in the title fight in eighth, the puncture on Auer’s car occurred on lap 33 just after passing the pit entry, so the Tyrolean had no chance of dragging his car in for a tyre change.
“It was a difficult day,” Maro Engel summed up. “After yesterday’s reclassifications we knew it wouldn’t be easy. But we didn’t do a perfect job today either. We struggled both in qualifying and in the race. In that respect we got the maximum points-wise. We will analyse everything carefully so we can attack fully again at the finale. We are definitely not giving up.”
Lucas Auer commented on his ongoing run of bad luck with a shrug: “I already had a slow puncture in the first stint but made it to the pit stop. Unfortunately the second puncture came at an extremely bad moment. In both cases I hadn’t touched anyone beforehand, so I can’t say any more about it.”
“Wipe our mouths, work through the weekend properly and then at the finale it’s maximum attack!” is the motto of WWR team principal Christian Hohenadel. “We didn’t have the best conditions today, but we didn’t get the maximum out of it either. So we got off lightly. Twenty points is a lot given how close the DTM is. But there are still 56 points to win in total, and we fully intend to fight for every single one of them!”
The big showdown in the fight for the 2024 DTM title takes place on 19/20 October at the Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg.