Auer had closed the gap to his BMW rival to just two points with victory in Saturday’s opening race, but this left him with 25kg of additional weight on his car for the all-important finale.
Starting 11th on the grid after a red flag in qualifying prevented him from setting a flying lap on new tyres, Auer could only rise as high as seventh in his Winward Mercedes AMG GT3, with a separate 5kg weight increase under Balance of Performance only making his life harder.
While BMW received a BoP hit of its own, via a decrease in turbo boost pressure and van der Linde also had to contend with 15kg of success ballast, the South African was able to climb from fifth to third to clinch his maiden title by 11 points.
Speaking after his narrow championship defeat, Auer felt there was little he could do to overhaul van der Linde’s points lead as he struggled to derive performance out of his heavily-ballasted car.
“The team did an amazing job but today we didn't have the pace, not at all,” the Austrian explained. “With the performance weight we had no chances.
“I was so slow that even sometimes it was critically [close] that someone would crash into me while I'm racing because I had to brake so much earlier. So it was really a tough race.”
Most of the drivers, including title contenders Auer and van der Linde, didn’t get a chance to show their true one-lap pace in qualifying after the session was cut short with two minutes and 25 seconds left on the clock due to a crash for Red Bull’s Felipe Fraga.
While van der Linde’s banker lap on old tyres was good enough for sixth, which became fifth after a penalty for Rosberg Audi's Nico Muller, Auer was forced to start the race from 11th on the grid.
The success ballast doesn’t apply in qualifying, which means Auer would have lined up much higher on the grid if it had not been red-flagged to allow for barrier repairs.
Asked how the race would have panned out had he had started inside the top five, Auer said: “At least I could have made everything a lot harder for Sheldon, of course, because if he wanted to pass me it would have been quite tough.
“This was a shame. Not the second place, this was still a great season, but I would have loved the chance to make the pole just to have a proper fight, which wasn't possible with the performance we had. We had no chances, just no speed.”
Second-place still marked Auer’s best championship result in a season, having previously finished sixth in 2017 as part of the factory Mercedes line-up.
While disappointed to miss out on a maiden title, Auer felt he and his Winward team can be pleased with the consistency they showed all through the season having taken victory in the opening round at Portimao.
“In 2017-18 we were also somewhere there [in the title fight], it just never worked out,” he said. “This was another year, another positive year.
“Very consistent I think in terms of getting the points. [With] the consistency we were probably the best ones, but we were just not often enough to have the fastest car on track. But not a bad season.”
