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ETS Round 1 Mühlheim-Kährlich

Mühlheim-Kährlich is only 200km away from home, so this is my “home race” of the ETS series. Because the track is non-permanent, and only built up for ETS, the advantage reduces to a shorter journey.

After many weeks of testing, where I surly drove many thousands of laps, it was time for the big race. Testing nearly every setup option of a new car is a lot of work. Of course it is a work that I like, and there are many things to learn. Some things work in the same way as I know from my old car, but some things are just different. At big races you don’t have much chance to test, so you have to do the work before. It is not only important to find out with which settings you start, but also to know, how the car will react to the changes. And you have to do this on different tracks. I do not know how many hundred screws I tightened in the last weeks, but I wanted to be prepared perfectly. Now all the work was done, the car was prepared as good as I could, and I was optimistic that a B-Final result was within reach, although you can never now in advance.

We arrived at the track on Thursday evening, met with Jan at his hotel and had lunch at the Italian restaurant close to the track. After this, we set our pit spaces and prepared everything for Friday morning. Knowing that the race would be exhausting, we went to bed early.

Friday morning 6:50: The alarm clock rings. Because we slept in the caravan, it took only a few minutes to get to the track where we met Marc and the other drivers. At 7:20 I drove my first battery. After the free practice group practice began. I was in group 28, so enough time for preparing the car, having breakfast and a shower. In the practice runs the car worked well. We had a lot of steering into the corners, maybe a little bit too much, and it was to be expected that it was only a matter of time when traction rolling occurred. After a few modifications to my setup, the car was perfect in the last practice heat. I was on place 11 in the practice ranking, which was created by the fastest three consecutive laps. I knew my car was very easy to drive. And knowing that it was fast at the same time, gave me confidence to have a very good chance for the B-Final, if not more.

The first qualifier started perfect. I drove good lap times, at same speed with the other drivers in my group. The lead changed every lap, so I knew it was very close. Trying to push even more, my car flipped driving over a curb in one of the hairpins. I lost never-ending 4 seconds. I pushed the final laps as hard as I could, and at the end I was surprisingly 6 th overall because many other drivers had mistakes, too.

Saturday morning was really tough. The qualification heats began already at 7:00, so to have a few practice laps I had to get up at 6:15. Getting up early paid off. My qualifier was really good, except one rolling over in the same corner as in the evening before, but this time my car landed rubber-side down and I lost only one second. I finished this round on 6 th place. With 12 points I was pretty secure in the A-Final.

The next qualification run was without mistakes, but points-wise I couldn’t improve as the other drivers were also fast this time. In the last round I took maximum risk to try to improve my points, but I took the corner at the end of the straight with too much speed and touched the wall, costing me 3 seconds, so no improvement was possible. The results from the early rounds were good enough for 9 th place on the grid, so I was pretty happy as this was even more than I had hoped before the start of the race.

The car was just perfect. So I went into the Finals without any changes to the setup. In the first final I was 7 th after the start, fighting for 6 th position, when a driver from behind overtook me with a hard move, so I lost my 7 th place and finished 8 th .

In the second final I had a good start, again fighting with the cars in front of me, when I got hit from behind and lost some time although the driver who hit me waited. Then I was a little bit over-motivated to regain the lost time and lost some time by overdriving the car.

The last final was big fun. From the start I tried to overtake Alex in front of me and some drivers in front of him made mistakes, so I was 5 th half into the run. Unfortunately Adrian Berntsen had a mistake, and rejoined the race only a few tenths behind mine and Alex Hagberg’s car. Alex let him pass on the first occasion, but I tried to keep my 4 th place. Unfortunately Adrian tried to pass where there is no chance to back out and let him pass, so we crashed, with Alex taking the 4 th place and me the 5 th . I was still happy with that, and was able to keep the 5 th place until the end of the run with 4 cars within 1.5 seconds behind me.

It was good to see that with only a few improvements to the car, we were able to keep up with the competition. I know that there are more performance-parts in the pipeline, and our development has just begun, so I am sure that this race was not a flash in the pan. For me personally this was a great race result, and there will be days when I finish in the B- or C-Main again. But I know, Marc will be there and pull the chestnuts out of the fire. He is a great driver, and it was only bad luck that he didn’t finish in the A-Final, as his fastest run was only a few tenths slower than mine.

It was fun to work with the team, and a good feeling to see that many drivers’ cars improved a lot with my help and setup advices.

See you at the track

David