Maximilian Günther had a trio of top three finishes at the Norisring last weekend, with the German taking his fourth victory of the season in race one as well as a third in race two and a second in race three.
The Prema Powerteam driver, who celebrated his twentieth birthday during the weekend, hit the top of the championship standings with the results in Germany, with his victory coming after erstwhile race leaders Jake Hughes and Lando Norris collided heading into turn one.
Günther admitted he put himself in a position to capitalise on anything that may have presented itself to him on Saturday, and he was rewarded with the win, his fourth in six races.
“The first race on the Norisring was exceptionally action-packed,” said Günther. “I got off to a great start and immediately moved up from fourth to second place.
“The leading group was fiercely contested, and at one point, I fell back to third. But I never lost contact with the two cars in front of me. They were fighting pretty hard with each other, so my plan was to position myself as advantageously as possible and wait for my chance.
“A few laps before the end, I took the lead and held it to the end. A home win and 25 points in the bag – that was a mega start to the weekend!”
Günther has a 34-point advantage in the championship over Joel Eriksson leaving the Norisring, and feels that his consistent results this season – he has yet to finish lower than seventh – are key to him being on top at this stage of the year, although he knows he needs to keep pushing in order to be there at the end of the season.
“I’ve been driving at a consistently high level this season,” admitted Günther. “This is the key to being on top of the championship at the end.
“We’ve won races, we’ve frequently been up there on the podium, and we’ve scored decent points in every race. We have made use of all the opportunities that have come our way. That is why we are now well positioned in the championship.
“The points lead sounds good, but we can’t afford to relax our efforts. For the second half of the season, our primary goal is to further improve the performance of the overall package. We will use the coming weeks for this purpose. I am confident that further progress will be made.”
