27.07.2008: Seventh race on the Nürburgring

Coming to the historic Nürburgring, team Futurecom-TME joined the last race before the long August break.

With bright sunshine the weekend started highly promising with an 8th best lap time of Christijan in Test 1. Katherine spent her time familiarizing herself with the demanding track, trying different lines and setup options.

She got used to the track and showed an impressing performance in the Free Practice Saturday afternoon with the 17th best lap time. Christijan knowing his way around the track, again found himself in the top ten as 9th fastest driver.

Shortly before the beginning of the qualifying it started to rain in the Eifel after a thunderstorm. During the second session the rain became so heavy that race control saw no alternative but to stop the qualifying because the track was flooded with water. With no quick improvement in weather conditions in sight, the qualifying was stopped completely and, according to the DTM regulations, the first session was used to determine the grid positions. For Katherine and Christijan, who both had hard times in the rain with their 2006 cars, this meant starting position 17 (Christijan) and 19 (Katherine).

In the race again, as it is often the case at the Nürburgring, the weather played a crucial part. Shortly before race start a thunderstorm with dark rain clouds was coming up.

Nevertheless team Futurecom-TME decided to start on slick tyres. This proved to be the right decision, because the predicted rain emerged itself as only a few drops of rain. Both drivers had excellent starts, Christijan gained important positions he had lost on Saturday in qualifying when his 2006-spec Audi A4 DTM lacked the necessary grip. At the end of lap one, he had worked his way up to tenth. He kept his position until lap five, in which he was involved in a thrilling battle with Winkelhock who, in the end, passed him. Following the pit-stop period, Albers still held eleventh position. Now, Mathias Lauda battled it out with the Dutchman. On lap 34, Christijan overtook the Austrian. As the rain got stronger, Christijan, as many other drivers, came in for a third pit stop to change to rain tyres, which was clearly the fastest way to the finish line. Some others, including Mathias Lauda, took the high risk of staying out on slicks during the heavy rain, and so Christijan finished eleventh. A solid result and - according to Christijan - the best you can achieve, with the two-year old racing car and his best race result so far.

Also Katherine demonstrated her skills and her fighting spirit. She made the courageous move to start on slicks and during the course of the race, she worked her way up to eighth. Just a short time before her second pit stop, she was involved in a close encounter with Maro Engel, resulting in her early retirement. A pity as the Nürburgring round could have been her best DTM race to date - despite her lack of experience.

The race was won by Bernd Schneider, ahead of Paul di Resta and Jamie Green.

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