25 Sep Late catch up brings Nico Müller seventh place
The 14th race of the DTM season did not end too bad for Team Rosberg after the day had started with a rainy and difficult qualifying. Nico Müller was 15th in qualifying, while his team mate Dev Gore hit the barriers due to aquaplaning. Even though his mechanics tried everything they could, it was not possible to completely repair the American’s Audi in the short time available between qualifying and race. Gore started from the pit lane, but had to retire after one lap. Müller, on the other hand, had a great run especially during the final race period, when he made up position after position with slicks on a drying track and finally finished seventh.
Nico Müller: “Today it was kind of driving in two different classes since the Porsche and Mercedes were exceptionally fast in these mixed conditions. My goal was to be ‘Best of the Rest’, which we almost managed with seventh place. I guess we have to be satisfied with that today. It was important that we changed to slicks at the right time. I’m still a little unhappy because of a mistake I made while attacking René Rast; I went off the ideal line and lost a few positions – but I do not think I could have done much better without this problem anyway.”
Dev Gore: “Unfortunately, my race was very short because it was not possible to entirely repair my car in time after the qualifying accident. We tried and I started, but it was already pretty obvious during the first lap of the race that it was just not enough. My accident in qualifying happened due to aquaplaning on a straight; I could not prevent the impact. It was a real shame because I believe I had the potential to be the best Audi today.”
Kimmo Liimatainen (team principal): “We struggled during the rainy qualifying. Unfortunately, Dev also had an accident and due to the short time until the race we were not able to fully repair his car. That is why he gave up after one lap of the race for safety reasons. Nico was especially in the last laps of the race very fast and the strategy of waiting a long time to change tyres and choosing slicks was absolutely right. Seventh place is not generally what we aim for, but if you start from position 15, then P7 is totally okay. And with this result we were also the best Audi in the field.”