The 2016 Stock Car Brasil champion was inducted into Red Bull’s DTM line-up this year following Liam Lawson’s decision to focus on Formula 2, racing a Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo operated by AF Corse.
Quick straight out of the blocks after limited pre-season testing, Fraga scored his podium on his second series start at Portimao and claimed a dominant win on the streets of Norisring in the fourth round of the season.
However, the Brazilian’s first year in the DTM was also marred by a slew of retirements, with the 27-year-old seeing the chequered flag only seven times over the course of the 16-race campaign.
His run of DNFs included five in a row prior to the breakthrough Norisring win, due to a puncture on the restart in the first part of the Portimao double header, a bizarre fire in Lausitzring qualifying, power steering issues and a collision with Lucas Auer at Imola, and a tap from Esteban Muth in the opening Norisring race.
Fraga said he can be pleased with how he performed on his move to DTM this year, even if his series of misfortunes meant he finished only 16th in the championship, three places behind team-mate Nick Cassidy who contested two fewer rounds.
“I think the performance was good,” Fraga told Autosport.
“I think if you look at qualifying and our results, I'm many, many times in the top five. So that is good, that shows that we are capable of doing good.
“Winning a race in my first season, making pole position, this is not bad at all.
“I think I had some really bad luck this year. We need to see it and analyse properly to see which [incidents] I could avoid, which ones I couldn't.
“For me it hurts a little bit because I started that season not that confident but I was straight away quick in Portimao.
“Then I created a lot of expectations, and that wasn't good because I suffered a lot through the year with bad crashes, the car on fire in Lausitzring, many, many stuff.
“I'm quite tired of hearing this 'lucky things'.
Fraga also lost at least 18 points when he was spun into retirement by Lamborghini’s Mirko Bortolotti while they battled for the lead at the Nurburgring, an incident for which the Italian received a five-place grid penalty.
The only major unforced error from Fraga came during the final qualifying of the season at Hockenheim, when he crashed into the barriers at Turn 1 seconds after taking provisional pole.
Asked if he would have been fighting for the championship heading into the title decider had he not been hit with so much bad luck, Fraga said: “For sure. If you take like two results I could be there.
“Just the Imola crash [after he'd led early on] and some other crash would easily give me 50 points. [But] I don't really like to say I could or I would.”
Fraga said his success in the DTM has been positively received by Red Bull and that the energy drink giant also supported him during his rough patch in the series.
“It's been good,” he said of his relationship with Red Bull.
“I have to really be thankful to Red Bull for that because at some point even I questioned myself with all this bad luck.
“I sometimes try to find what happened, even with something I couldn't avoid. But they have been really, really nice to me.
“They never put pressure on me, they always supported me really well with all these bad results and I think they really trusted my capacity to do well, so that also makes my life more relaxed, to try to perform.”
