Tough weekend for Gary Paffett at Nürburgring

London, UK – Weather played a huge factor in Gary Paffett’s race at the Nürburgring this weekend for the seventh round of the DTM season.

The Mercedes-Benz driver had reasonably good practice and qualifying sessions, with everyone struggling to keep consistent times during qualifying. Paffett secured fifth place on the starting grid, the best position of the title contenders and also the fastest of the Mercedes-Benz drivers.

Gary Paffett, HWA, DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupe

Photo by: ITR eV

With rain scheduled to make an appearance, strategies were going to be tested. Paffett started the race on slicks along with the rest of the field, but opted for the harder compound. As the green flag was shown, the rain started to come down and it was soon apparent that those on the softer compound were running faster.

When pits opened, the track was starting to dry up and so the team made the decision to stick with slicks but to switch to the softer compound. However a few laps later the rain came down and Paffett tried to stay out but was losing to much time to the leaders and forced to pit again for wet tyres.

Driving the EURONICS Mercedes AMG C-Coupé, Paffett was now able to start driving competitively, but 10 laps later the track started drying up and once again he was back in the pits for slick tyres resulting in him re-joining the race a lap down.

Despite all of this, Paffett showed that he did have a competitive car by setting the third fastest time of the race but was unable to make up any positions and finished 17th . He now sits sixth in the championship with 57 points.

“It was a really frustrating weekend,” said Paffett. “We had a competitive car and that was shown by my team-mates Robert (Wickens) and Christian (Vietoris) getting podiums so we had real potential for a win.

It’s a real shame because I was only 37 points behind the championship leader coming into this race but being 49 points behind now, with only a possibility of 75 points left, makes it hard to challenge for the championship win now. We are testing in a few weeks before our next race so that will give me something to focus on and hopefully we can get some good results in the next few races”.

The next round for the MB Partners driver will be at Oschersleben in Germany, 14-15 September.

Gary Paffett