R-Motorsport and the new Aston Martin Vantage #DTM now one third of the way through debut season

Hockenheim, Zolder and now Misano: R Motorsport leave Italy having completed race number six and the first third of the 2019 DTM.

Just three months after the new Aston Martin Vantage DTM made its track debut in early March, R-Motorsport can already look back on their fifth and sixth DTM races which they contested at Misano this weekend.

On the third race weekend of its yet young history, the team completed a total of 268 race laps, equivalent to 1,132 race kilometres, in the two races on Saturday and Sunday. This enabled the team to gain further experience with the Aston Martin Vantage DTM, which was developed and built in record time.

Unlike in the first race on Saturday, Ferdinand von Habsburg (21, Austria) opted for a longer first stint on Sunday. Consequently, he delayed his mandatory pit stop until the 19th lap. Ferdinand eventually crossed the finish line in 12th position, just outside the points.

Jake Dennis (23, Great Britain) came in on lap 27 as the last driver in the field to make a scheduled pit stop. By staying out so long before changing tyres, he notched up several laps as race leader with the new car. After his stop, he eventually finished 13th.

His team-mate Daniel Juncadella (28, Spain), adopted a different strategy, namely an ultra-early stop. The Spanish driver came to the pits for his tyre change immediately after the opening lap. He ultimately finished in 14th position.

For one of last year’s race winners, Paul Di Resta (33, Great Britain), the race came to an unfortunate premature end after only six laps. The 2010 DTM champion had to park his car at the edge of the track with a technical problem.

After Misano, the next stop for the team in their DTM debut season is the Norisring (5th – 7th July). It will be their first experience of racing on the Nuremberg street circuit, which is generally considered to be the highlight of the season.

Comments after the race

Ferdinand von Habsburg
Qualifying: P18
Race: P12
Start number: 62
Car: Aston Martin Vantage DTM
“A great race, but unfortunately no points. That basically sums up today from my perspective. But I can still take satisfaction, because I made the best of the situation. At the same time, we also learned some things that we can do better next time. All in all, it was a great race and I had a lot of fun. I really had to use my elbows out there and managed to overtake an Audi for the first time. Andrea Dovizioso is an absolute legend on a motorbike, and it’s really cool to be battling with him for track position.“

Jake Dennis
Qualifying: P15
Race: P13
Start number: 76
Car: Aston Martin Vantage DTM
“That was a tough race. We made a late stop, just like last time at Zolder, in the hope that we might benefit from a possible safety car. In a normal race like today, it’s is not the quickest strategy, but we took the risk to maybe make it into the points. We came close, but unfortunately it didn’t pay off.“

Daniel Juncadella
Qualifying: P16
Race: P14
Start number: 23
Car: Aston Martin Vantage DTM
“Unfortunately, I had the wrong strategy today. Because I made that early pit stop after the first lap, I had to complete 38 laps on the same set of tyres. So unfortunately, the tyres were already gone after 20 laps, which made the car very difficult to drive.“

Paul Di Resta
Qualifying: P17
Race: DNF
Start number: 03
Car: Aston Martin Vantage DTM
“That was a weekend to forget. Only yesterday, we had the retirement shortly before the end of the race, and now today, we’ve had had another problem with the car. Ahead of qualifying, we made some changes to concentrate more on the balance in the race than performance on a single lap. But unfortunately, I was unable to put in all that many laps before having to retire.“

Dr Florian Kamelger, R-Motorsport Team Principal
“We knew that Misano would be a very difficult weekend for us. The two races here showed that we still have a lot of catching up to do. For the first time this season, we have come away from a DTM weekend without any points. Our drivers – most notably Ferdinand – showed great fighting spirit, but despite an excellent driving performance from our youngest rookie, he couldn’t finish better than twelfth. We left Jake out in the hope of a safety car, but although he accumulated several laps as race leader, it was a strategy that didn’t work out. He ultimately crossed the finish line in 13th position just ahead of Daniel. We must thoroughly analyse the cause of Paul’s DNF. We now need to roll our sleeves up and work systematically on developing our technical package.“