Why Aston Martin driver Gilles Magnus crashed into the rear of the youngest DTM driver ever despite an 80 km/h speed limit, and how he was penalized
After the first stops, Landgraf Mercedes rookie Tom Kalender, who started from 18th place, was already in a strong tenth place in Sunday’s DTM race at the Norisring – ahead of his championship-leading teammate Lucas Auer. But then, during the full-course yellow phase declared due to Fabio Scherer’s loose wheel, a curious incident occurred.
Comtoyou Aston Martin driver Gilles Magnus slammed into the right side of his rear with full force, ending his race. “I would say I didn’t brake too early,” Kalender justified himself to ran.de. “It does happen that drivers don’t expect it. I saw four or three seconds on the dash – and that was also the normal braking point. I don’t know what my colleague was thinking.”
The youngest DTM driver ever, who had finished 13th on Saturday, had to bury his chances of his best DTM result to date. “I had already made up a few places with the strategy, and up to that point, everything had actually gone really well,” said Kalender, whose right rear suspension was noticeably damaged.
Sports director Nissen explains: “Unfortunately, we had a radio problem.”
After hearing both drivers, the stewards penalized Magnus, who tried to avoid the collision but touched the guardrail, with a five-place grid penalty for the next race because the Belgian caused the collision. But how could the incident happen when the race was actually neutralized and the speed limit was 80 km/h?
“Unfortunately, we had a radio problem that affected Gilles and his race engineer,” Magnus was unaware of the FCY phase due to the radio failure.
“He has a display in his car that counts down from ten to zero. He simply overlooked it. If we hadn’t had this radio problem, the race engineer would have said, ‘Full course yellow coming up’. Then he would have seen it 100 percent on the display,” said Nissen, referring to an unfortunate chain of events that took both drivers out of the race on lap 22 of 64.
Penalty against Comtoyou driver Magnus for Nissen okay
That doesn’t change who’s to blame. “He took 100 percent responsibility and apologized to the other team,” said the former Volkswagen motorsport boss. “The race stewards saw it the same way and decided to give him three penalty laps for this mistake, which was clearly his fault.”
However, as the incident also knocked Magnus out of the race, the penalty was converted to a grid penalty for the next race. “That’s the right decision,” Nissen has no doubt. “If we make a mistake in the race, we have to be punished in some way for that mistake.”
