Abt Audi Sport’s Daniel Abt believes he has the pace to challenge at the front of the field, but is yet to maximise the outcome.
Abt is ninth in the championship, more than 40 points behind team mate Lucas Di Grassi. The German is yet to finish higher than sixth this season, whilst Di Grassi has celebrated four podiums. But Abt believes those results don’t tell the whole story.
“If you look at it from a qualifying point of view, I was three times ahead of him. He was twice ahead of me, so actually, I’ve been doing better in qualifying compared to Lucas,” he told Read Motorsport.
“But, whenever I was doing well in qualifying, I had the disqualification.”
So far this season, Abt has struggled to work his way up through the field, whilst Di Grassi has managed to take strong finishes from poor starting positions. Abt believes the main difference between him and his team mate is luck with strategy.
“He had twice really bad quails, but he was always able – with luck and strategy and everything – to maximise the outcome,” he said. “That has not happened for me.
“There’s not much you can do if you start from the back. You either get the safety car at the right time or not. For Lucas, it worked out, and that’s why he has a lot of points.”
If bad luck has had such a strong impact on Abt’s season, it’s not going to be easy for him to close the gap to his team mate. Though he still has six races to turn things around, the problem he faces isn’t one with a simple solution.
“I don’t think we need to turn it around,” he said. “We just need to really put it all together.
“I think in Mexico we should have been fighting for the win. We had the pace, we had the result in quali that, with a little mistake, was taken away. So I think we just need to maximise the outcome.”
Abt came close to a strong finish with a sixth place in Paris, only for his car to stop a few corners before the chequered flag.
