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The way 2016 Manor Formula 1 signing Pascal Wehrlein blossomed off and on-track in his DTM championship campaign showed why Mercedes has such faith in him, as MITCHELL ADAM explains

While covering the 2015 DTM season for Autosport, my opinion of Pascal Wehrlein changed significantly.

Of course, before stepping into the paddock for the first time, I knew the young German was highly rated. In the previous year, he had won his first DTM race, and been signed by Mercedes as its Formula 1 reserve driver, so he was going places. Fast.

My first dealing with Pascal in May wasn't great. In the Thursday press conference before Hockenheim's season opener, I asked what he wanted out of the year, based on what came together in 2014, and got a fairly plain answer equating to "to do my best" in return.

Admittedly, I don't speak German, and Wehrlein was working in his (excellent) second language, English, but the consensus from local journalists was that he never said anything too groundbreaking in his native tongue anyway.

Not that he wasn't accommodating, or was an arrogant jerk, but his quiet public persona was more Nico Rosberg than Sebastian Vettel.

That changed a lot during the next six months.

In the corresponding Thursday press conference at Hockenheim in October, Wehrlein was cracking jokes and genuinely talkative. It helped that he had one hand on the championship trophy, but he embraced the occasion.

As you would expect for a young driver, he grew during the year and was completely at ease in the limelight when he wrapped up the title with one race to spare, one day before his 21st birthday.

What had emerged in public was closer to what people said was his funny and friendly off-track personality.

Those close to Mercedes' DTM operation say he built a particularly close rapport with his crew, and was a keen participant in his mechanics' WhatsApp group.

What was more impressive with his public growth was that it could have all been lost, following the 'push him out' saga at the Red Bull Ring round in August.

Wehrlein was furious after that race, and did not retreat into 'safe answer' mode. He swung hard.

"If Audi has to win a championship like this, I would say they've started a big war today," he told Autosport.

"I hope they will have big consequences, I hope everyone is writing about this situation, what Audi was starting and I hope that no one is buying an Audi next week."

Apparently those comments brought him some flak in Germany, which hurt Wehrlein, and was a shame. But fortunately it didn't send him back into his shell.

On-track, he was massively impressive.

After that Red Bull Ring round, Wehrlein was 17 points behind Mattias Ekstrom, and you'd have put money on the Swede taking a third DTM title, especially given the speed of the 2015 Audi.

But he fumbled and Wehrlein stayed strong over the next four events. With 13 of the series' 24 drivers winning a race, consistency was going to win you the title, and Wehrlein had that in spades.

When he headed to the Hockenheim finale, his average qualifying position was 6.75 and race finish 5.4. In 18 races, he scored points 15 times, which was set to be 16 before Timo Scheider's Austrian touch.

His qualifying form was particularly important, despite not being one of the 14 drivers to claim a pole position. Those 20-minute sessions were incredibly tight and tense, and in a series like the DTM it is so easy to be one per cent out of the set-up window, but Wehrlein and his engineer Tom Seward got it right more often than anyone else.

He just kept on delivering, despite the random results around him and success ballast that meant his Mercedes was generally among the heavier cars.

"Pascal did the best job of anyone all year," Mercedes stablemate Gary Paffett said of Wehrlein's 2015.

"He was very strong. In a lot of the races he was the best Mercedes, but not all of them, and when he wasn't the best Mercedes he was close.

"You always seemed to be looking at his data, trying to figure out what he was doing differently.

"He very rarely had a bad day, and he's a fighter in the races as well. People think maybe it came easily and he just got in the car and did the job, but you'd go into the engineering office at night and he'd be in there talking to the engineers.

"Sometimes you have that year where you know what you want from the car and your engineer knows how to give you that and it just works. And that's the year he had - he turned up and every time he managed to get the best, or nearly the best, out of the car."

Now he gets the chance to take that to Formula 1, with Manor Racing.