Edoardo Mortara: Audi still has way to go to match DTM rivals

Mortara, the only man to win a DTM race for Audi since September last year, finished second at the Nurburgring last Sunday.

But the Italian was mystified as to the reason behind his outright pace disadvantage to race winner Bruno Spengler, who won by 6.7 seconds in his BMW.

Team Rosberg driver Mortara said: "We were eight tenths off the pace on the fastest laps. I said to the team during the race 'how do we find these eight tenths?'

"I was pleased with the performance though because I really drove as well as I could with the car. It was good for us, but obviously we need to improve because Bruno was very fast.

"But next we go to Zandvoort and we'll try and find something with the car and the set-up, and hopefully see an improvement."

Head of Audi Sport Wolfgang Ullrich was satisfied with the forward steps made with the A5 machine both at the Nurburgring and at the previous week's Magny-Cours test.

But he agrees with Mortara that more still needs to be done to ensure that the cars run at the front on a consistent basis.

"At the Nurburgring we saw that we made a step forward. Our next aim is to convert this into a victory," Ullrich said.

"The track at Zandvoort has provided us with a number of good results before - we work to ensure that things will be going so well also this year."