Oct
31
Gary Paffett’s DTM Blog: Hockenheim
Round 10 of the 2011 DTM and we headed back to where it all started at the beginning of the season; Hockenheim.
The week leading up to this race had been a tough one: the loss of Dan Wheldon in a crash at the final Indycar race of the season at Las Vegas rocked the world of motorsport and hit me pretty hard personally. Dan had been winning everything when I first started racing karts in the UK and was therefore someone I looked up to. I got to know Dan in his early career as we all travelled the country competing in the British Karting championships.
Dan was really at a great point in his career and life. He had just signed a deal for 2012 and had a wife and two young boys, which is something I can really relate to and that makes his death, doing what we all love so much, really hard to take in. It reminds us of the dangers in motorsport and just how cruel it can be at times.
A race weekend was exactly what we all needed to take our minds off of it and focus on something else. I did, however, request that I wear an arm band in Dan’s memory just to show we were still thinking of him.
It was an earlier than usual start to the weekend as we drove out on Wednesday morning. The whole family was off to Hockenheim and it’s certainly a lot easier to pack them into a car than get on a plane! A two-hour drive down to Folkestone, a short train ride and a six-hour drive through three countries and we were there.
Waiting for us was a great big motorhome kindly supplied by Stingray RV for the weekend; loads of space for the kids to run riot for the weekend!
On Thursday morning, we all took a drive down to Metzingen just south of Stuttgart to visit the guys at Hugo Boss and do a bit of shopping, before heading back to the track for the pre-race briefings and track walk. When I say track walk I actually mean a quick scooter ride in a big winter jacket! It has never been this cold here before surely!!?? It was under 10 degrees outside and felt a lot more like a winter testing day than a race weekend.
The whole team was pumped up for a good finish to the year. The championship had been decided at Valencia with Martin Tomczyk taking the title so this was a clean fight to claim victory in the final race of the season.
The winter-like weather continued into Friday morning with a two hour delay to the roll out session because of thick fog. Once it cleared we were away and, with some good work by the organisers, we made up all the time lost during the day without cutting our session short. The afternoon test went well; we completed a long run and some good race setup. We clearly ran a different program to others and this meant that the four HWA Mercedes cars finished the session in 12th, 15th, 16th and 18th positions. I was 15th after completing 34 laps and was actually pretty happy with the car balance. The most important change to the car during the session was to close all the driver cooling ducts as it was turning my fingers and feet to ice!!
This weekend was the end of the 2011 season but also and possibly more importantly the end of the C-Class in the DTM. From next year we will be running the AMG Mercedes C-Coupe and so this was a farewell to the most successful DTM car in history with 84 wins from 158 races – and I have contributed 17 wins to this tally. This car also brought me my championship win in 2005 and all the recent title winning cars were on display in the “RaceClub”.
On Friday Evening during the team dinner we had a few interviews from Norbert Haug amongst others and some really good footage of the C-Class in the DTM which brought back a lot of memories from years gone by. How young we all were back then!
There were no fog delays on Saturday morning and the second test session was completed without problems. Concentrating more on qualifying setup I completed 28 laps and ended the session in 11th position 0.4 seconds back from the quickest time. Audi dominated the session with seven out of the top ten cars so it looked like qualifying might be tough.
Qualifying was certainly different. Audi were not dominating as they had in the morning session and Jamie Green ended Q1 in first place. I had made a mistake on my first lap and had a mad dash to get out and do another run late in the session. I got through to Q2 but only in 12th position. There was a lot more time in the car I just had to pull the perfect lap together.
In Q2 I got a really good lap together and finished up in P2 just behind Molina with Mathias Ekstrom the biggest name to drop out in 10th position.
In Q3 I wasn’t able to quite repeat the lap time from the previous session and I finished the session in 7th position; a little disappointing but we just didn’t have the speed in the session. With qualifying over, the dominant Molina would start on pole for the second time in three races, with Green in a good second place ahead of three more Audi’s. Spengler was 6th, with me 7th and Olly Jarvis in 8th. It was not where I wanted to be on the grid but we still had a chance of scoring some good points from there.
On Saturday evening, the C-Class celebrations continued with a Champions’ parade with Klaus Ludwig, myself, Bernd Schneider and Paul Di Resta standing next to our championship winning C-Class cars and then unveiling the 2012 C-Class Coupe with the help of two time F1 world champion Mika Häkkinen.
In the morning warm-up session Molina dominated once again; heading the field by 0.24s from Champion Tomczyk. I finished the session in 7th position just 0.2 seconds back from Tomczyk.On Sunday morning at breakfast we were once again for the second time in a week reminded of the dangerous world we live in, with reports that Marco Simoncelli the 24 year-old Moto GP ace had lost his life in a crash at Sepang. He was a really exciting racer and had his whole career ahead of him. R.I.P. Marco.
As we prepared for the race the sun was out but it was still damn cold! Around 10 degrees and the usual ride on the back of the cabrios for the driver parade was not as enjoyable this time around. We stopped at the Mercedes grandstand for an interview in front of the fans and headed back to the starting grid. After a chat with the engineer and a few good luck handshakes I got in the car ready for the final race of the year.
We set off and the warm-up lap was busier than usual. With the cold temperatures, the drivers had to work a lot harder to get the tyres up to racing temperature so cue a lot of vigorous weaving and hard braking. At the start I had a good launch; getting alongside Spengler into turn one and making most of the tarmac run off I managed to stay there into turn two. I stayed on the outside into turn two, which became the inside of turn three and I was past. I was dropping back slightly from the battling Rockenfeller and Scheider but pulling away from fellow Brit Jarvis.
As planned, we stopped very early on lap 10 and so did Rocky. Scheider stopped one lap later and as he exited I was through turn one. Having the benefit on warm tyres I got alongside him into turn two and squeezed him to the inside. I got round the outside and through into 5th place. I had to defend for about five laps; the Audi having a much better straight line speed meant I was vulnerable into the turn four hairpin but I managed to pull a small gap and then set about catching Rocky.
Scheider stopped very early for his second stop to try and jump me but we matched him and stayed ahead. With 20 laps to go we had to look after our tyres. I was trying to catch Rocky but we had such a similar pace it was proving very difficult. Behind me, Ekstrom had made his way up to 6th and on fresher tyres was starting to catch me as my tyres started to go off.
I couldn’t catch Rocky and so for the last five laps concentrated on staying in front of Eki. I crossed the finish line for the final race of the year in 5th position, helping me move up to 7th in the championship. With Bruno struggling and only finishing in 9th place, he also lost 2nd place in the standings to Ekstrom. Jamie Green was the runaway winner of the final race; winning by 7.5s and taking the C Class win tally to 85/159.
Mercedes put on a really good season end party on Sunday night where the dress code was the traditional German lederhosen! Not our usual attire but we enjoyed letting our hair down and partying through the night.
Generally, Hockenheim was a positive end to a difficult season and, for me, 2012 can’t come soon enough! Enjoy the rest of the F1 season and have a great winter, see you in 2012!!
Follow Gary on Twitter @garypaffett