After four races without a visit to the Formula V8 3.5 podium, championship leader Tom Dillmann returned to it at the Red Bull Ring with third place in race one on Saturday, before following that up with another visit for second place on Sunday.
The AVF by Adrian Vallés driver qualified third for race one, but a bad start meant he dropped a couple of positions to Yu Kanamaru and Egor Orudzhev into the first corner, but the Frenchman managed to regain both quickly, but was unable to do anything about either Matthieu Vaxiviere and Louis Deletraz ahead of him and was forced to settle for third.
“I had a really bad start, the anti-stall entered again, so I lost lots of positions,” revealed Dillmann on formulav8.com. “I gained on the back straight over Kanamaru and later on over Orudzhev.
“I had to struggle a bit after each stint, at the beginning of the race and during the safety-car restart, when I was quite slow, so the gap was too big. We are back on the podium after a long time, four races, but we need to be quicker to fight again for the victory.”
Dillmann was only able to qualify seventh for race two after seeing his best lap deleted due to track limits, but made a much better start to run fifth, and ran long before his pit stop with good pace to move up to second, eventually finishing on the tail of winner Aurélien Panis.
“It was okay since the start where I took one position,” said Dillmann. “The pace was really good, we kept running pitting in the last lap of the window.
“Compared to yesterday we had a great pace. As I was the quickest car on track we decided to go longer, so I moved from 5th to 2nd. Still good points, and ahead of my direct competitors, so it’s a positive weekend and thanks to AVF.”
