Hello everyone,
It is a pleasure to share my daily experiences throughout the DTM season with the readers of Auto123.com. I just got back from Mercedes' end-of-year party, where we celebrated the team's 2010 DTM championship title. I had a lot of fun all the way to the wee hours of the night.
Of course, from a driver's standpoint, the season didn't exactly turn out like I had hoped for, but it was close. Real close. As so often happens in high-level racing, the little things meant everything in deciding the overall champion. After finishing third in Adria, the next-to-last round on the DTM calendar, I was able to regain the top spot in the rankings with a three-point lead over Paul Di Resta and nine points ahead of Gary Paffett, my teammate at Mercedes HWA. The final round in Shanghai promised to be exciting. I had never been to China before and the city is gorgeous. On paper, the track seemed interesting, but right from the start of practice, we realized that the challenge would be greater than anticipated due to an ultra-slick coating over the pedestrian crossing lines. Many drivers lost control as a result. However, the Chinese staff quickly worked on a fix between practice and the race. On Sunday, those sections definitely felt less slippery. Come to think of it, maybe that was a bad thing for me...
My mistake during the qualifications cost me dearly. I slightly locked one of the outside wheels in a corner and I ended up on the dirty part of the track, where I could do nothing but slide. The impact wasn't severe, though; I hit the wall at a mere 20 km/h! Yet, it proved to be enough to seriously damage my right front wheel. At that point, I had only one thing in mind: return to the pits as quickly as possible in order to get back in and complete some laps before the end of the session. The crew did an outstanding job to put the machine up and running in record-breaking time. I drove up until Audi's Timo Scheider crashed in spectacular fashion (no major injuries, fortunately). That was it for me – I would have to start from the last line on the grid.
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