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First race at the Nürburgring: Gary Paffett and Pascal Wehrlein in the points

• Gary Paffett (Mercedes-AMG Motorsport PETRONAS) books his eighth podium finish of the season, his fourth at the Nürburgring and the 46th in his DTM career
• Pascal Wehrlein (Mercedes-AMG Motorsport PETRONAS) takes seventh place
• Mercedes-AMG Motorsport continue to lead the drivers ', team and manufacturers' standings - Gary (194 points) replaces team-mate Paul Di Resta (186 points) at the top of the table
• Gary Paffett: "We now have to improve and find more pace. Then we can hopefully have a better day tomorrow"
• Ulrich Fritz: "Apart from Gary's podium, we can't really be satisfied with today"

Nürburgring - The Mercedes-AMG Motorsport DTM Team started the eighth race weekend of the 2018 DTM season with a podium at the Nürburgring. Gary Paffett (Mercedes-AMG Motorsport PETRONAS) finished the 15th race of the season in third place. With his eighth podium finish of the year, his fourth in the Eifel, Gary reclaimed the lead in the drivers' standings. By the way, this was the team's 25th podium finish of this year.

Pascal Wehrlein (Mercedes-AMG Motorsport PETRONAS) crossed the line in seventh place. Lucas Auer (SILBERPFEIL Energy Mercedes-AMG Motorsport) came home in P11 to finish just outside of the points.

Edoardo Mortara (SILBERPFEIL Energy Mercedes-AMG Motorsport), Daniel Juncadella (Mercedes-AMG Motorsport REMUS) and Paul Di Resta (Mercedes-AMG Motorsport REMUS) took P13, P15 and P18 respectively. Towards the middle of the race, Paul had been close to moving into the Top Three, but after successfully overtaking Philipp Eng, the BMW driver made him spin off track and drop to the rear of the field.

As a result, Gary (194 points) retakes the lead in the drivers' standings. Paul (186 points) is in second place, eight points behind the 2005 champion. Mercedes-AMG Motorsport PETRONAS (292 points) lead the team classification. In the manufacturers' standings, Mercedes-AMG Motorsport (769 points) are 284 points up on BMW (485 points).

Looking ahead to race 2: The 16th round of the 2018 DTM season starts on Sunday at 13:30 CEST (live on SAT.1 at 13:00 CEST). Third practice will take place before that at 09:00 CEST followed by the second qualifying at 11:15 CEST. During each race weekend, we will provide live timing data, live commentary, fan voting and exclusive behind-the-scenes videos of the Mercedes-AMG Motorsport DTM Team on our website at: www.mercedes-amg-motorsport.com/dtm.

Comments after the Race

Gary Paffett (37, England):
P3
Car number: 2
Team: Mercedes-AMG Motorsport PETRONAS
Car: Mercedes-AMG C 63 DTM
"A podium is a good result for me today. My aim is to score as many points as possible in every race. I'm obviously a bit disappointed to have started from the front row and then only finished third. That's not what I was hoping for. But René (Rast) and BMW were very strong today. We now have to improve and find more pace. Then we can hopefully have a better day tomorrow."

Pascal Wehrlein (23, Germany):
P7
Car number: 94
Team: Mercedes-AMG Motorsport PETRONAS
Car: Mercedes-AMG C 63 DTM
"Unfortunately, we were never going to finish any higher than seventh today. From where I started on the grid, I immediately got caught up in a scrimmage, which cost me several positions. I also sustained some damage to my car, so I'm actually surprised that it kept going quite so well in the race and that I was able to finish where I did. But I think it's plain to see that the other manufacturers have an advantage over us with the new rules on tyre pressure. We now have to see how we can improve in this area so that the tyres don't degrade so much in the race."

Lucas Auer (23, Austria):
P11
Car number: 22
Team: SILBERPFEIL Energy Mercedes-AMG Motorsport
Car: Mercedes-AMG C 63 DTM
"My start was bad and I couldn't attack. After that, I wasn't able to match the pace of the front-runners 100% in the early stages. But it got better over the course of the race. We opted for an aggressive strategy today and took a risk by pitting very early for our change of tyres, but we weren't able to sustain it to the end of the race. Anyway, tomorrow is a new day, so let's wait and see what happens in qualifying."

Edoardo Mortara (31, Italy):
P13
Car number: 48
Team: SILBERPFEIL Energy Mercedes-AMG Motorsport
Car: Mercedes-AMG C 63 DTM
"That was a difficult day for me. Qualifying was far from optimal. I got held up by traffic and had to start from the back of the grid. Unfortunately, we were lacking in pace and I locked up at the start of the race. As a result, I lost several places. Now we have to pull ourselves together and find a way to make better use of the tyres under the new regulations."

Daniel Juncadella (26, Spain):
P15
Car number: 23
Team: Mercedes-AMG Motorsport REMUS
Car: Mercedes-AMG C 63 DTM
"I got off to a good start, but things went a bit haywire on the first lap. I wasn't able to gain any positions, but at least I didn't lose any either. I then got into a scrap with Timo Glock who kept forcing me off the track. That was very frustrating for me, as it destroyed my race. Unfortunately, my car was damaged after that incident, and I was unable to achieve anything in the rest of the race."

Paul Di Resta (32, Scotland):
P18
Car number: 3
Team: Mercedes-AMG Motorsport REMUS
Car: Mercedes-AMG C 63 DTM
"That was a disappointing day for me. Starting from eighth was by no mean ideal, but it would still have been possible to come away with a decent result. In that way, I could have extended my run of Top Ten finishes and minimised the points loss to Gary. But unfortunately, it was not meant to be. I was hit from behind after an overtaking move and got spun around. After that, the race was over for me. Now I'm hoping for a better outcome to tomorrow."

Ulrich Fritz, Head of Mercedes-AMG Motorsport DTM:
"Apart from Gary's podium, we can't really be satisfied with today. All our drivers lost positions in the race with the exception of Pascal. That was partly due to one or two incidents that happened and to the newly specified minimum tyre pressures which didn't suit our setup at all. That's definitely something we'll have to look at for tomorrow."