At his home race in the DTM German Touring Car Series at Brands Hatch at the weekend it went from elation to disappointment in a matter of minutes for Gary Paffett.

The Bromley born driver thought that he had finished third in his home race only to have it snatched from him after a post-race decision dropped him to sixth place.

Overall it was still a strong weekend for the Brit especially after he had a difficult qualifying session and then to do what he did on the Indy circuit at Brands Hatch which has limited overtaking opportunities but it would have been over the moon had he finished third.

He qualified 12^th but moved up to 11^th when the pole position lap of Martin Tomczyk was excluded as his car was deemed to be underweight. However, that was scant conciliation for the Mercedes team as they failed to make it through to Q3 and the pole position shootout.

In order to achieve the best from his car on race day Paffett and his engineers decided on an aggressive race strategy. He started on the hard tyres before switching to the soft compound option on lap four.

He managed to move up from 17^th after his pit stop to sixth place before his second mandatory tyre chance, he then re-joined down in 16^th place and had to make his move all over again. Once the pit stop sequence had shaken out Paffett was in third place and on course for his first podium of the 2013 campaign.

That is exactly what happened and he took the flag in 3^rd place overall, however after the race Paffett was one of six drivers penalised for not slowing sufficiently in a yellow flag zone. He was given a five second penalty and demoted to sixth on the grid, although he did achieve the fastest lap of the race.

Giving his reaction to events after the race Paffett, said: “As a team, Mercedes seemed to struggle in qualifying. I just made it into Q2 and I got everything I could from the car, I pushed as hard as I’ve ever pushed in a qualifying session – I hardly took a breath out there! The balance of the car was OK, it was quite nice to drive, but we just lacked speed.

“After qualifying we would have been happy with sixth but after the job I did in the race, it is disappointing to have the podium taken away. It’s difficult to know the reference they take [judging if drivers have slowed sufficiently under yellow flags], I slowed enough I thought but not as much as was needed. Our strategy was good, we went aggressive with the first stop and the performance of the car was good in race conditions. We have a good race car but just need to improve qualifying.”

The DTM bandwagon now moves on to Australia where Paffett and his rivals will race at the Red Bull Ring over in the first weekend in June.