I was 6th in free practice on Friday and disapointingly 11th in first qualifying on the first day after I did not use the tyres well (I did my fastest time when the tyres were 15 laps old and had little grip left).
On Saturday I improved to 9th position, 1.096 seconds from the pole position. The lap is quite long, over 4 km so this was not too bad for a 'rookie'. Unfortunately, on my best lap (the tyres are only at their peak for 1 or possibly just 2 laps), I had to overtake 2 cars in the last 2 corners. The data showed this cost me 3/10s of a second. Without the traffic I would have been 4th or 5th on the grid.
In the race, I made the second worst start of my career and I dropped almost to the back. I haven't practiced starts which is probably a mistake. I know what I did wrong and it won't happen again.
I started to come through, passing Benjamin Launberger, Daniel Bauer, Roland Asch (went wide), Wolf Henzler and Pierre Kaffer amongst others but unfortunately I ran wide by braking too late and picked up a lot of DTM rubber on my tyres which lost me a lot of grip for over a lap and let Asch, Kaffer and Henzler back through.
I stayed on the back of this train for about 10 laps before I made another move on Henzler and got through. The battle with Henzler cost me a lot of time and I dropped a few seconds behind Kaffer and Asch. The rest of the race was quiet as we didn't have the pace to catch those two again because I had pushed my tyres very hard after the bad start to get back a better position.
In the end I finished 8th. There were three retirements but all from behind me. My fastest lap of 1:29.742 compares to Alexander Davison's (the winner) of 1:29.401 so it is clear that we are making progress.
The team were very pleased as this is their best result for quite a long time. Hopefully for the rest of the year I can continue to improve and be consistently in the top six, which for a novice Porsche driver withought any pre season testing would be regarded as good.
The next race is at the Norisring. I will let you know how it goes.
Check back soon for the latest news at www.geocities.com/parcfermeuk