Kristensen Apologises to Paffett
Audi's Tom Kristensen has apologised to DTM Championship leader Gary Paffett over his on-track behaviour at the Norisring on Sunday, but he refused to comment on speculation that he was acting on team orders
Paffett was left furious with Kristensen after he appeared to slow deliberately while leading the race, just prior to his second pitstop. The Briton accused his rival of then trying to drive him off the road and claimed he had lost all 'respect' for him as a racing driver.
But speaking to Autosport-Atlas, Kristensen revealed that he had spoken to Paffett about his actions to make it clear that he had not deliberately played it dirty. He also expressed his own frustration at the situation, because he knew at that stage of the race he could not win.
"I have said sorry to Gary," said Kristensen, who eventually finished seventh. "Gary deserved the victory yesterday and I know for me that at that stage I couldn't win the race.
"I was of course disappointed about that. I would probably have finished fourth if I would have continued my pace as before, so in that sense I was not pleased obviously."
When asked why he had slowed down, Kristensen declined to explain the real reasons - fuelling speculation about internal team orders at Audi.
"I slowed down a lot. It was something that I think was, let's say, not very nice and it is not something that will happen again.
"Wherever it (the decision to slow) came from I have no comment, but I can just make sure that it will never happen again."
Despite Kristensen's refusal to speak about why he dropped his pace so dramatically, there are suggestions that the Audi driver was asked to slow deliberately and hinder Paffett's pace to try and drop him back into the clutches of his teammates.
This comes despite the fact by that stage of the race Paffett was comfortably clear of the pursuing Audis of privateer Christian Abt and Championship challenger Mattias Ekstrom. This meant that Kristensen's help was effectively wasted and only served to ruin his own chances in the race.
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