Van der Linde Tried to Avoid ‘Crazy Moves’ in Cassidy Battle

Sheldon van der Linde explained he took a risk versus reward approach in his battle for the race lead in Sunday’s DTM race at Spa, opting to finish the race in second in order to extend his championship advantage once he failed to pass Nick Cassidy.

Van der Linde lost out to Cassidy after a hard-fought race, with the New Zealander leading the pair across the finish line to record his maiden victory in the series.

The South African, meanwhile, further extended his points advantage at the top of the standings by coming home in second, increasing his tally to 130 with four races remaining.

Cassidy captured the lead during the round of mandatory stops, emerging from the pits ahead of Van der Linde after the latter had a slow stop.

A battle between the two drivers ensued where Van der Linde came close to recapturing the lead, but eventually settled into second position behind Cassidy’s AlphaTauri AF Corse Ferrari.

“It was extremely difficult,” Van der Linde spoke of the scrap.

“I saw Nick coming out in front of me, which I also didn’t know.

“The only thing I knew was that our pitstop was very slow on the front left unfortunately, so we lost a lot of time.

“I knew that Nick was also flying before the pitstop so I knew it would be close but unfortunately I did not know he would be past me already.”

Cassidy for his part explained that he took significant risk on his outlap to avoid giving the position to Van der Linde.

“I had to hold it flat through Eau Rouge on the cold tires out the pits, otherwise he was going to get me,” Cassidy noted.

“It worked, it was close. Those two outlaps were probably the most difficult, but luckily I was able to hold on.

“I just had so much will to win today. I wasn’t going to give it up.”

Van der Linde added: “He said he took it flat, I could not because I had a lot of front aero wash so I had to lift slightly more than I would have liked.”

“I just got next to him into turn five and tried to go around the outside.

“He left me enough room, so big respect for that. He could have easily squeezed me off.”

While the battle between the two was intense, the Schubert Motorsport driver insisted he tried to avoid jeopardizing a potential points haul for the championship.

“It’s hard for me as well because I want to take the race win but at the same time I don’t want to take too much risk where I just throw a possible podium away.

“At this point in time it’s really important for me to score as many points as possible and that was my goal, obviously.”

With a 32-point lead over Lucas Auer in the championship following Sunday’s race, Van der Linde asserted that a risk versus reward mentality would be key for the remaining rounds.

“I think it’s very important now to the end, especially the last four races, to really measure up the risk and reward.

“Because as we’ve seen in the past, it doesn’t really make sense to go for crazy moves when it is not really going to pay off.

“I tried to do that today as well, of course, and I’ll continue to do that to the end.”

Van der Linde ultimately settled into second position and did not fight Cassidy as hard during a one-lap dash to the flag following a late full course yellow caused by a puncture for title rival Rene Rast, which dropped the German out of the race.

Following Rast’s retirement, Van der Linde admitted he had a ‘mindset switch’ and was happy to finish second, although he maintained he would not have gone to extreme lengths to pass Cassidy prior to that.

“I heard that Rene was out of the race, which was obviously unfortunate for him, but I knew that I did not have to take as much risk as opposed to the beginning when he was directly behind me to win and keep that margin in the championship.

“It definitely changed my mindset slightly, but I was never going to risk anything crazy against him either. It was just like a mindset change.

“I tried on the outlap because I knew that was my best chance of getting past Nick because he was vulnerable on cold tires.

“I don’t think that on raw pace I had what it took to get in front of him so I just accepted it and brought the car home in the end.”