Quotes after qualifying at Budapest
Miguel Molina

Miguel Molina will start the DTM race at the Hungaroring as the best Audi driver. Quotes from the Audi camp after qualifying.

Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich (Head of Audi Motorsport): “Miguel (Molina) managed another strong qualifying performance. He’s got good chances of clinching a podium finish tomorrow – perhaps even his first victory in the DTM. We’re going to watch the race from the test day at Le Mans and naturally keep our fingers crossed for him. Of course we’re going to do that for the other Audi drivers too, who are going to try and make up ground in the race.”

Dieter Gass (Head of DTM): “Surely we’d have wished for a better result here. In the past, we often managed to have our cars very close together. We weren’t able to make this happen in this form here so we’ve only got one car on the first two rows of the grid and three in the top eight. We’ve got to work on that in order to achieve one of our great strengths again – a well-balanced line-up.”

Miguel Molina (Audi Sport Audi RS 5 DTM), grid position 3
“Obviously it’s good to be in a position at the very front. I do believe though that today this was all we had in our quiver. Today, the BMW were very fast. We did everything right and have good chances of being in contention for victory tomorrow.”

Nico Müller (Audi Financial Services RS 5 DTM), grid position 8
“Qualifying was positive. After free practice, Q3 was our aim – and we achieved that. I’m happy to be the third-best Audi driver. The entire team did a good job and the car will no doubt be optimal for the long run. I’m hoping for a good race now and to be advancing a bit more.”

Adrien Tambay (Playboy Audi RS 5 DTM), grid position 7
“In free practice, my car was difficult to drive. Afterwards, we made some major changes and I think they paid off. Grid position seven is a good starting base for the race.” 

Jamie Green (Hoffmann Group Audi RS 5 DTM), grid position 10
“I think I did a pretty good job, drove sensibly and made no major mistakes. Tenth place is close to Q3, we’re heading in the right direction. But there’s still some more work to do.”

Mattias Ekström (Red Bull Audi RS 5 DTM), grid position 11
“Eleventh place in qualifying is nothing to write home about. You seldom win a race from eleventh place. I’m a bit disappointed about the result.”

Edoardo Mortara (Audi Sport Audi RS 5 DTM), grid position 12
“It was a difficult qualifying session. We weren’t particularly fast and I had a few problems, especially in Q1. But we’re going to battle in the race! With a good start you can make up a lot of ground here. I believe I’ve got a good car for the race and then anything’s possible.”

Mike Rockenfeller (Schaeffler Audi RS 5 DTM), grid position 13
“Qualifying was disappointing for me. I changed my set-up after the last race but that didn’t work out. My car was difficult to drive. In the race tomorrow, we’ve got to cope with that and make the best of it.”

Timo Scheider (AUTO TEST Audi RS 5 DTM), grid position 15
“A disappointing qualifying session. Despite the fact that we had a few problems this morning I was optimistic. In Q1, we even saved a set of tires because the performance on lap one was okay. But there was no further improvement in Q2 and, to top it off, my fastest lap was cancelled. That would have amounted to two more places. But we’re much too far away from the front runners anyhow.”

Hans-Jürgen Abt (Team Director Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline): “Congratulations to Miguel (Molina), as the best Audi driver he came close to the BMW cars but they couldn’t be beaten today. We’ve got to develop a good strategy for the race and are hoping for a good pace on option tires in order to try and take a podium at the end of the weekend.”

Ernst Moser (Team Director Audi Sport Team Phoenix): “A pretty sobering qualifying result. I wouldn’t have thought that that’s where we’d end up. The time gaps to the front runners are particularly large. Now we’ve got to take a close look at why that was the case and how we can get closer. Obviously, we’re going to try and make the best of this situation – but especially here that’ll be very difficult. We’re going to try and get both cars to finish in the points but we’ve simply got to remain realistic too.”

Arno Zensen (Team Director Audi Sport Team Rosberg): “It was a decent day for us. We’ve got both cars in the top ten and are the third- and fourth-best Audi cars. Our ‘little one’ (Nico Müller) did a really good job of making it into Q3 right in the third race – I’m pleased with that.”


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