Bromley’s Gary Paffett had a disappointing weekend in the latest round of the DTM German Touring Car Championship.

He came away from the Red Bull Ring in Austria with a ninth place finish to show for his efforts from the weekend, after starting from ninth place on the grid.

Unfortunately for Paffett a controversial time penalty cost the Brit who had the pace to be challenging for the podium places.

His qualifying efforts were hampered by an electronics issue on his Mercedes which meant that he couldn’t progress into the fourth part of qualifying on Saturday.

From the start of the race on Sunday he managed to make up three places from the start and unfortunately he couldn’t make any more up on the first lap as he was elbowed out as they ran three abreast down into turn three and he dropped back to ninth.

He didn’t stop until lap 29 after starting the race on the softer options, where he was up to second place. He had to add a two second penalty to his pit stop after the race officials decided that he was at fault for the contact with Tomczyk on lap nine while they were fighting it out for eight place.

He came out in 11^th place and immediately set about making up some places on the harder tyres and took ninth place, but clearly felt he should have taken more.

Speaking after the race, he said: “We weren’t expecting great things after practice, but the car was competitive and I was pleasantly surprised. Qualifying was going well, then we had the misfire and problem with the electrics which stopped us doing a lap in Q3. That was disappointing as we had better pace than at Brands [Hatch].

“The balance of the car wasn’t bad on the option tyre, we picked up the pace towards the end of the run and did 29 laps which was just about the most of anyone. We were catching those ahead and it was all looking good, but then I got a penalty for the overtaking battle with [Martin] Tomczyk – that was questionable. Instead of costing me two seconds at the first stop, it was more like five seconds.

“Our speed on the prime tyre was good, I did a better lap on the harder tyre than the option but the five seconds we lost really cost us. We had the potential to be P6 today. We had a better qualifying car this weekend, good pace in the race and we did a lot of things right. Without the problem in qualifying, had we started in the top six, we could have challenged for the podium.”

Round four of the DTM season heads to Lausitzring in Germany in two weeks’ time over the weekend of the 15^th and 16^th June.