Katherine Legge has admitted that her lack of experience in the DTM is costing her when it comes to race weekends, after inching further along her personal learning curve at Mugello.
The Briton started the Italian weekend positively, appearing to pick up momentum by putting her 2006-spec Futurecom TME Audi A4 ahead of four 2007-spec Mercedes cars, and not far adrift of team-mate and ex-
F1 pilot Christijan Albers.
However, when qualifying came around, the blue-and-white Hofmuhl car had slipped back down the order, a problem denying it the sort of performance that had been evident all day on Friday and in Saturday's practice session.
"Qualifying was a big disappointment," Legge admitted after slotting in 18th of the 19 runners, "We thought that the gaps would be much smaller but, unfortunately, we didn't even achieve our time from the free practice session. We made a big mistake with the tyre pressure, which probably cost us almost a whole second and, with regard to our speed in the race, unfortunately, we don't know where we stand compared to the competition.”
A slow start to the race dropped Legge to the rear of the field and, although she gamely gave chase to the newer machinery ahead of her, only retirements kept her out of 19th spot at the chequered flag.
"We didn't have a particularly good race - we fought hard but, for some reason, we keep losing too much time," she sighed, "That was the case in qualifying as well as throughout the race on Sunday, and we're also struggling with massive oversteer. We need to take our time and carefully analyse the situation. We're still simply lacking experience."
Legge now has a weekend off before the series reconvenes at the Lausitzring for round four of the 2008 campaign.
