By Mattias Ekström
With the 2012 season about to get under way, the DTM teams are in Hockenheim putting the final touches to their new cars. Here's Mattias Ekström with his first blog of 2012 to tell you how it's going…
Hi everybody,
Long time, no blog. Racing drivers don’t exactly hibernate in the off-season but there really hasn't been that much to talk about. I’ve trained, I’ve tested the new car, I’ve been at home a lot and enjoyed family life… It’s been good, but work is calling now.
This week we’ve been at Hockenheim, taking part in the final pre-season test. I did a whole day of media on Monday, followed by driving on Tuesday and Thursday. I think the car is a good one but it’s just a feeling – we won’t know until qualifying begins for the first race here at Hockenheim in a couple of weeks. I’ve been around far too long to be impressed by times in testing. Everybody’s sandbagging like crazy, so you don’t read too much into it.
The final test isn’t so much about R&D – we’ve done that already. It's about about fine-tuning our set up for the first race. Or, as we’re back-to-back at Hockenheim and then Lausitz, fine-tuning for the first two races. You have to prepare now if you want to have straightforward race weekends. When everything is new, you can’t take it for granted that you’ll just slip back into the groove. We think strategically, act calmly and focus on what we need to do.
It’s going to be a little bit different this year with BMW coming into DTM. It’s nice when you stand in the pitlane and see the Audi, Mercedes and BWM brands on display. The championship got a big boost from BMW coming in: it’s a big event and it’s nice to be part of it.
But with that comes a change in the competition dynamic. From what I’ve seen and felt during testing, things will be different this year. I think everyone’s taken things a little more seriously during the winter. We always were serious but I think you can feel more tension in the air ahead of this season.
My feeling is that it will be the drivers rather than the cars that make the difference this year. You always need the best combination of both because you're not going to win the championship without the best car. But equally you're not going to win without the best driver.
This year I get the feeling that the new cars will be pretty evenly matched, so the guy behind the wheel will make a big difference and the champion will be the driver who is most consistent. I might be wrong, though. We might have all the Audi A5DTMs at the front – and as an Audi driver I’d love that because it would mean we’ve done a really good job. But I really don’t think one brand will dominate in that way.
We’ll find out in a couple of weeks.
Cheerio,
Mattias
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