Saturday’s qualifying session had started well with Oliver setting a very fast lap on the first set of tyres, but improvements were hard to find after that through lack of grip.

Starting 7th on the grid in Sunday’s race in front of 78,000 spectators, Oliver got off the line well but as early as the first lap, a Mercedes made contact with his car on three occasions.  On the second lap, he found himself a casualty of a Mercedes yet again in the hairpin, in an incident which damaged the right front suspension forcing Oliver to retire from the race.

“This was such a disappointing start to the season for me,” says Oliver Jarvis who made his debut race drive for the Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline for the first time driving the latest (2009) spec Audi A4 DTM car.  “Unfortunately, when Maro Engel in the Mercedes ran into me, it was race over for me in just the second lap. Now we’ve got a lot of work to do so I’m hoping for a better result at Valencia.”

It was a disappointing result all round for Audi who had to watch Mercedes take the top slots.  Tyres played a crucial role and punctures proved costly for Audi, despite their cars being very fast on the track.  “We did not manage to make the new tyre generation work on our cars and we have to deal with this problem,” said Head of Audi Motorsport, Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich.  “We have to solve it by the next race in Valencia and do a better job there.”

The next race is at Valencia is on 23 May.