As weekend’s go Bromley’s Gary Paffett couldn’t have had a worse one in the latest round of the DTM German Touring Car Championship.

Weather was the massive factor in his race weekend, as he looked good in practise and qualifying and had put his Mercedes-Benz on the grid in fifth place, and was up to third place on the opening laps.

It however got worse for Paffett from there as with rain scheduled to make an appearance, strategies were going to be tested. Paffett started the race on slicks along with the rest of the field, but opted for the harder compound. As the green flag was shown, the rain started to come down and it was soon apparent that those on the softer compound were running faster. When pits opened, the track was starting to dry up and so the team made the decision to stick with slicks but to switch to the softer compound.

However, a few laps later the rain came down and Paffett tried to stay out but was losing to much time to the leaders and forced to pit again for wet tyres. Driving the EURONICS Mercedes AMG C-Coupé, Paffett was now able to start driving competitively, but 10 laps later the track started drying up and once again he was back in the pits for slick tyres resulting in him re-joining the race a lap down. Despite all of this, Paffett showed that he did have a competitive car by setting the third fastest time of the race but was unable to make up any positions and finished 17^th . He now sits sixth in the championship with 57 points.

Giving his thoughts after the race, Paffett said: “It was a really frustrating weekend, we had a competitive car and that was shown by my team-mates Robert (Wickens) and Christian (Vietoris) getting podiums so we had real potential for a win. It’s a real shame because I was only 37 points behind the championship leader coming into this race but being 49 points behind now, with only a possibility of 75 points left, makes it hard to challenge for the championship win now.

“We are testing in a few weeks before our next race so that will give me something to focus on and hopefully we can get some good results in the next few races”.

The next round for the MB Partners driver will be at Oschersleben in Germany, 14-15 September.