Gounon about Styrofoam flight insert: “Thought it would be a serious accident”

– Jules Gounon experienced an extremely chaotic afternoon at the second DTM race in Zandvoort. Especially his collision with a BWT advertising board at the exit of the Scheivlak curve, where his Winward Mercedes flew wildly through the air and he just managed to catch the “Mamba,” caused tense moments.

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“Well, they didn’t want to sponsor me this year, so I had no choice,” jokes the Winward driver after the race, which he finished in twelfth place.

“Jokes aside, I was in a really difficult corner wheel to wheel with Maini. I knew: If I can’t overtake the Ford, then I’m dead. They are really fast on the straight, so I had to try something. I went for it, that was a really brave maneuver. I probably also bounced a bit with the car.”

Gounon admits: “I thought it was going to be a bad accident, but somehow I was able to save the car. Well, then my race was over anyway.”

After this little shock moment, Gounon reported via radio that he had a flat tire. Nevertheless, the Mercedes factory driver continued and did not make an emergency stop.

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Gounon’s behavior was also investigated by the race stewards. After all, the fierce duel between him and Maini extended through the entire first sector. Especially a small contact in the steep curve was examined, but it was concluded that no clear fault could be proven. Accordingly: No further action.

The reason why Gounon had to duel with the Ford driver at all lies in the botched pit stop. It lasted 13.8 seconds, which pushed the Frenchman living in Andorra back into the mid to rear field. Before that, Gounon had already worked his way up to eighth position.

Due to this incident, there was a short safety car phase after the first pit stop window. This gave Gounon and his teammate Maro Engel the chance to catch up with the field again. Bizarrely, Engel also lost valuable seconds in the pits due to a mistake by the Winward crew – his stop even lasted 14.5 seconds.

Nevertheless, the winner of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring was able to regain the lead in the DTM championship with a fourth place. Meanwhile, Maini finished the race in 16th place and thus scored no points.

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