Mercedes, mercurial, merciful
DTM HUNGARORING (H) JUNE 2-3 ROUND 3/10
Paul di Resta was arguably the star of the DTM weekend at the Hungaroring, even if he was apparently gifted victory in the Saturday race by Mercedes team-mate Lucas Auer. BMW, dreadfully off the pace this weekend, was then gifted a podium wipeout on Sunday – topped by Marco Wittmann – when the skies unleashed a heavy shower and the race was red-flagged.
But the biggest gift of the weekend was that for the DTM itself. The reason for the red-flagging of that race was a spate of accidents in the pits that left three marshals with bad leg injuries, and some mechanics picking themselves up after becoming unwitting skittles in a tenpin bowling game. It could have been so much worse.
When the rain struck in the early stages, many of the field dived for the pits. The surface for the pit boxes at the Hungaroring is concrete, and Auer slithered straight past his mechanics, striking the marshals as he hit the garage wall. Moments later, Bruno Spengler sent his BMW mechanics sprawling, and on the following lap Edoardo Mortara’s Merc knocked over its gantry into the pitlane.
The subsequent red flag turned the race on its head for what would be a 17-lap run of green-flag action to the finish – on a circuit now rapidly drying in the hot Hungarian sun. BMW pair Philipp Eng and Wittmann had made their mandatory pitstops just as the rain started to fall, switching onto grooved Hankook rubber and making up time on those who’d remained on slicks. Although Eng and Wittmann were sixth and seventh respectively, the five cars ahead had yet to make any stops, so Eng effectively had the net lead. Just behind them was Timo Glock – the pre-weekend championship leader had been ‘lucky’ enough to have been turned into a spin on the opening lap by Nico Muller’s Audi, so had immediately switched onto his second set of slicks, moving him onto what turned out to be an advantageous strategy.
Five laps into the restart, Wittmann moved his Rmg-run M4 DTM past Eng at Turn 1. Up front were the Mercs of Daniel Juncadella and Pascal Wehrlein, the Catalan having just taken the lead from his teammate, but they were doomed as they needed to make their stops, and wouldn’t even score points. Glock too passed Eng, and his second place moved him back into a points lead he had lost overnight to Gary Paffett – the Brit was one of those not to have stopped at the time of the red flag, and his punt on wet-weather tyres for the restart flopped.
Glock and BMW had been full of gloom on Saturday, the Hungaroring’s 30-plus temperatures playing havoc with the
Munich machines’ performance. Not a single BMW scored points. Effectively, this was a Mercedes weekend, and Stuttgart can feel unfortunate that the bizarre occurrences on Sunday compromised its ability to make capital on a weekend where the C63 reigned.
Audi also bounced back from its earlyseason woes – Muller joined poleman di Resta on the front row for the first race, and pursued the Scot in the early stages. Time lost in the pitstop dropped di Resta to a net third, with team-mate Auer now leading, before di Resta muscled his way past Muller’s Audi around the outside of Turn 1. With 13 laps remaining, Auer stayed well out of the way as di Resta sailed past the Austrian into Turn 2. “It was a clear fight,” protested Auer in response to questions about what was 100% obvious to everyone watching. “You have to be quite careful with the tyres. I pushed to the limit and got P1 but Paul came back to me. I tried to save the tyres and by the end I was again back on it.”
While Auer was just half a second behind di Resta at the finish, the two Audis of Muller and Rene Rast were also within 2.8s of victory. This was a big step forward from Ingolstadt, and Muller reckoned he could have pressured the Mercs more had he not flat-spotted his front-right tyre in his second-stint fight with di Resta.
Whatever the merits of his Saturday win, di Resta was flying on Sunday. A qualifying mistake at Turn 4 cost him a shot at pole, putting him third – behind Auer and Wehrlein – in a Merc 1-2-3-4-5. Auer led, but Wehrlein took over as the rain fell, and then came Auer’s catastrophic pit mishap.
Di Resta starred on the restart. He was a net 10th when the race went green, but by the finish had made his way up to fifth. On the way he passed Auer, who freely admitted “I didn’t care about this race.” To add insult to injury – in what can be regarded as a callous implementation of regulation zealotry – Auer, Spengler and Mortara were excluded for their pit incidents.
“After the events this was the most we were going to get,” pointed out di Resta. “Another two laps and we could have been back on the podium. It was a lottery when we pitted, and you can always look back to see what you would have done differently. But the most important thing is that everyone is OK.”