Quebec's own Bruno Spengler, a Mercedes-Benz factory driver, is sharing exclusive comments with Auto123.com readers following his second-place finish at Lausitzring, Germany, last Sunday.
Hello to all Auto123.com fans,
As I write this from Portugal, I'm taking a week off in the Faro region after the first two rounds of the 2009 DTM Championship, not to mention an intense program that began in early May.
Following my retirement at Hockenheim, it goes without saying that my weekend at Lausitzring went much better. As you know, I placed second and collected eight precious points in the standings.
After a massage session last Tuesday and some mental preparation with my kinesiologist in France, I drove off on Thursday morning. Strasbourg-Lausitz is a 700-kilometer trip! I'm starting to get used to these long drives; there's been so many over the years… On the evening, I went to the restaurant with our team physician, Dr. Schmidt. He's quite a character!
I kicked off Friday morning with a light jogging around the hotel. Since Hockenheim, I've realized that, even with no private tests scheduled on Friday before the race, the day is still loaded with interviews, promotional activities, training and other stuff.
In the late hours of the afternoon, we had the Rollout, which is sort of a warm-up. I did a few laps to make sure everything was in place for the weekend. At night, the team met and talked at length about possibly inclement weather conditions during the race. We were not disappointed!
On Saturday, the qualifying sessions turned into a little nightmare. The sky was pretty dark and cloudy, yet I hit the track with slick tires. What do you know -- it started to rain just seconds afterwards!
Team HWA - the works Mercedes-Benz team - then chose to send me back in hope of clocking a fast time. This proved to be a wise decision and a turning point of the weekend. My times were good enough to enter the second qualification, while several drivers got caught by Mother Nature, including Tom Kristensen and Martin Tomczyk, who stayed in Q1.
Q2 went pretty well despite persisting drizzle. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to properly take advantage of the available grip during Q3, so I had to content myself with the fifth-best time. I was hoping for a better result, but that was still good enough and I had every reason to enter the race with confidence. Later, the team and I spent a lot of time preparing for Sunday. Mercedes even invited us to watch the finale of the German soccer league while eating a delicious dinner.
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| Bruno Spengler with his race engineer, Marcus Rohrich. |
Hello to all Auto123.com fans,
As I write this from Portugal, I'm taking a week off in the Faro region after the first two rounds of the 2009 DTM Championship, not to mention an intense program that began in early May.
Following my retirement at Hockenheim, it goes without saying that my weekend at Lausitzring went much better. As you know, I placed second and collected eight precious points in the standings.
After a massage session last Tuesday and some mental preparation with my kinesiologist in France, I drove off on Thursday morning. Strasbourg-Lausitz is a 700-kilometer trip! I'm starting to get used to these long drives; there's been so many over the years… On the evening, I went to the restaurant with our team physician, Dr. Schmidt. He's quite a character!
I kicked off Friday morning with a light jogging around the hotel. Since Hockenheim, I've realized that, even with no private tests scheduled on Friday before the race, the day is still loaded with interviews, promotional activities, training and other stuff.
In the late hours of the afternoon, we had the Rollout, which is sort of a warm-up. I did a few laps to make sure everything was in place for the weekend. At night, the team met and talked at length about possibly inclement weather conditions during the race. We were not disappointed!
On Saturday, the qualifying sessions turned into a little nightmare. The sky was pretty dark and cloudy, yet I hit the track with slick tires. What do you know -- it started to rain just seconds afterwards!
Team HWA - the works Mercedes-Benz team - then chose to send me back in hope of clocking a fast time. This proved to be a wise decision and a turning point of the weekend. My times were good enough to enter the second qualification, while several drivers got caught by Mother Nature, including Tom Kristensen and Martin Tomczyk, who stayed in Q1.
Q2 went pretty well despite persisting drizzle. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to properly take advantage of the available grip during Q3, so I had to content myself with the fifth-best time. I was hoping for a better result, but that was still good enough and I had every reason to enter the race with confidence. Later, the team and I spent a lot of time preparing for Sunday. Mercedes even invited us to watch the finale of the German soccer league while eating a delicious dinner.
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