Eurospeedway

Xingular · 9 de Septiembre del 2005

The 1.95-mile circuit near Dresden hosted the second round of the DTM four months ago but the cancellation of a proposed race at Avignon in France has forced DTM organisers into a re-visit.

McNish qualified his Siemens “factory” Audi A4DTM in 13th position in May but contact with Marcel Fassler’s Opel forced his car in to retirement with accident damage.

Allan has since recorded point-scoring, top-eight finishes in four races and is optimistic he can improve on his current best finish, a fourth he achieved at the Norisring (17 July).

“Although my first-ever EuroSpeedway race ended in disappointment I’m going back with high expectations,” confirmed Allan who was narrowly denied a second consecutive Le Mans Endurance Series at the Nürburgring (4 Sep).

“I now have the knowledge of the circuit but also my Audi A4DTM has further developments which I feel will be well suited to the EuroSpeedway as good, low-speed grip is of paramount importance.

Defending DTM champion Mattias Ekström won last year’s EuroSpeedway race while Gary Paffett (Mercedes) started from pole-position and won this year’s event. Paffett starts the 48-lap, 102-mile race with a slender one-point lead over Ekström.

Preview.

Xingular · 17 de Septiembre del 2005

On Friday, Frank Stippler was the quickest Audi driver at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz, which is the venue for the ninth DTM race of the season this weekend. Heavy rain pouring down on the 3.442-kilometre circuit made conditions extremely difficult and caused several cars to spin. Only during the last minutes of the second test session the racing line dried off, meaning that Friday’s results – with five Audi A4 DTM cars among the top ten and title defender Mattias Ekström 14 places ahead of the current leader of the standings, Gary Paffett – are not very conclusive.

For the qualifying on Saturday (broadcast live on ARD, starting at 2 p.m., local time) and the race on Sunday, the weather forecast has predicted better conditions.

Quotes after Friday’s tests

Frank Stippler (Audi Sport Team Joest #19)

12th place / 2nd place, 1m 26.574s

"I’m very satisfied with this Friday. On wets I was always roughly between eighth and tenth place – that’s a respectable result. And with slicks on the drying track we were sorted as well as we’d been in the qualifying at Oschersleben where conditions were very similar.”

Allan McNish (Audi Sport Team Abt #6)

9th place / 3rd place, 1m 26.998s

"I didn’t realise how important being familiar with a circuit and knowing how the car should feel is in the DTM. My A4 was well-balanced today. Whenever I was out on the track, I was among the top six. For a Friday, that was a very good performance.”

Pierre Kaffer (Audi Sport Team Joest Racing #15)

17th place / 4th place, 1m 27.343s

"In the first test we tried a few things that didn’t work out all that well. In the second test everything was okay. In wet conditions I kept running in tenth place, more or less. Twenty minutes before the end I went out with slicks – that was the right decision. I’m happy about fourth place.”

Mattias Ekström (Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline #1)

7th place / 5th place, 1m 27.786s

"When a track stays wet for such a long time you can try out a lot of different things. That’s what we did today, gaining experience in the process. Still, I’d rather have dry weather tomorrow.”

Tom Kristensen (Audi Sport Team Abt #5)

4th place / 9th place, 1m 29.286s

"That was a good Friday, I’m very satisfied. We improved our rain set-up, on wets we were the quickest today. When the track started drying off towards the end, I was a bit unfortunate in traffic and decided not to take any more risks.”

Rinaldo Capello (Audi Sport Team Joest #18)

19th place / 12th place, 1m 29.775s

"We had some problems in wet conditions which we were able to resolve shortly before the end of the second test. After the last change we made the car felt very good – that’s important for tomorrow. On slicks I went out a bit too late, the tyres just didn’t warm up to the right temperatures any more.”

Christian Abt (Audi Sport Team Joest Racing #14)

11th place / 14th place, 1m 30.035s

"Apart from the fact that we tried out a few things in the rain there’s not much to say about today. Unless you were out towards the end, when the track had dried all of a sudden, you simply weren’t among the front runners. I hope that we’ll have dry conditions tomorrow – in the wet, it’s not that much fun here.”

Martin Tomczyk (Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline #2)

14th place / 20th place, 1m 31.582s

"I wouldn’t say that the day was a total loss. But we weren’t able to gather a lot of information. If anything, it was possible to find the right line. In the end, clocking a fast time wasn’t important for me any more.”

Hans-Jürgen Abt (Team Director Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline): "Today was a ‘weather day’ with changing conditions. We tried out a lot of different things with all the cars. Yet the results aren’t very conclusive.”

Ralf Jüttner (Technical Director Audi Sport Team Joest): "I’m pretty sure that all the set-up work was in vain because the weather is supposed to be getting better. As far as the results go, things looked pretty good for us today. Those who went out on slicks at just the right time towards the end were far in front – fortunately we managed to do that with Frank and Pierre. But tomorrow we’ll be starting from scratch again.”

Dr Wolfgang Ullrich (Head of Audi Motorsport): "We tried to find the best possible set-up for these weather conditions and managed to do that pretty well with all of our cars. Yet we’re proceeding from the assumption that it’ll be dry tomorrow morning. In any event, it was interesting to see that so many cars came so close to each other even in such extreme conditions – which shows yet again how tight the DTM field is.”