A champion in Super Formula and the FIA World Endurance Championship in the past, as well as a Le Mans 24 Hours winner, Duval joined DTM after Audi's cancellation of its LMP1 programme.

But the Frenchman, who has yet to score a point in four races and has a best finish so far of 14th, says it has been difficult to "put everything together".

"Even though I have some experience in racing, for sure it is a difficult one," Duval told Motorsport.com.

"You think you have learnt a lot, but you still realise that every single day there is something to learn. It is difficult to me, I was expecting it to be difficult, but it is just to put everything together."

"For example, today [Sunday at Lausitz] in qualifying if you take the ultimate lap with my best sector times I was P9, but I didn't do the best sector times together so I was 14th.

"Then in the race I had a good start, but then I was stuck, and then I lost positions. In the first stint the car was really difficult to drive, I had massive understeer and I was really struggling with the car.

"Then I start my second stint and I have the fourth-fastest car or something like that, but then I caught Blomqvist and I killed the front tyre, I couldn't overtake and then I was nowhere again.

"There are some positives about the performance but we definitely didn't put everything together and that is going to be the difficult point of it."

Apart from Duval himself, his Audi engineer is also new to the series, which is making things difficult, according to the Frenchman.

"I am a rookie in DTM, but it is a typical championship and also my engineer doesn't know the DTM," added Duval. "So both [of us] together not knowing, sometimes we don't know exactly where to step and that is difficult."

DTM tyres easy to overdrive

Duval marked out the behaviour of the DTM's Hankook tyres as a big difference between the German series and some of the other championships he has raced in.

"Every tyre has a different philosophy, this type of tyres are really difficult [compared] to what I used to drive the last 10 years," he said.

"You could do things to those tyres and the tyres accepted, and you could stress them a little bit, you could overdrive them. These tyres are always difficult to overdrive and push to the limit.

"Sometimes you have to back off a little bit, that is the most difficult to know exactly when it is too much and when it is not enough."