As for the external view, Timo Glock did not cut a good figure at the DTM on the Nürburgring: Although the ex-formula 1 pilot was finally allowed to take a seat in the supposedly better McLaren 720s GT3 Evo of his teammate Ben Dörr and this bell took over unpopular car, he clearly pulled out the shorter ones. And how!
Dörr won his first DTM pole on Sunday and was 0.725 seconds faster than his 43-year-old teammate, which was only 19th. Is refuted that Glock had a vehicle disadvantage? The Saturday qualifying also points to seventh place in which Dörr came and the Glock, which started from 13th place, was 0.276 seconds tenth.
“From the results,” says technology chief Robin Dörr when asked whether Glock’s disadvantage has been refuted with it. “But now we have to take the data home with us and evaluate it in peace. Then we can make a clear statement.” However, Glock sees itself confirmed by the race weekend – and has an explanation.
“Other drivers do what I would do” “
“My driving style that works on any other car doesn’t really work on this car at the moment,” says the Odenwald after the failure at the Sunday race because of a gear problem. “The Ben has a certain driving style and knows the car and can implement it very well.”
What exactly does Glock mean? “Just that you can drive more into the curve on the brake,” says Glock in an interview with Motorsport-Total.com. “With this car you have to brake, then leave the brake, let the car roll briefly and at some point climb back on the gas when the car allows it. But as a driver, of course, you try to control the car something over the brakes and over the gas in the curve.”
This is “currently not possible as with other GT3 cars, whether it is the Porsche, the BMW or whatever”. According to Glock, the TV pictures also show: “When I look at onboards, others do nothing more than what I would do. But it doesn’t work by car.”
How the vehicle exchange for Glock affected
Nevertheless, after the vehicle exchange, the car allows him “more this driving style”, Glock clarifies. “That’s why I was fastest on Friday. That didn’t come out of nowhere.” In addition, he “struggled with Preining & Co.” this time, “which I was not able to do before.”
And: According to his own information, he was able to drive the fast times on Friday “four, five, six rounds at a time, because the car allows it constantly. But then continues to go in this direction and to build the car more on my driving style does not work.”
This bitter knowledge was made after a set-up experiment in Sunday qualifying. “We said: ‘Come on, no matter, shit on it, we’ll try something again now!'” Glock describes the decision on Saturday evening. “If it doesn’t work, we learned something.”
Glock’s realization: “You have to adjust yourself to the car as a driver”
Then “we were three tenths slower in the first and third sector in the first and third sector and in the second sector with one of the fastest, but that didn’t work in the slow curves,” he explains the problem. Therefore, you have to “go back to what we had on Friday and then build on it. This is the only way that works at the moment,” twitches Glock with our shoulders.
Why was he also slower in qualifying on Saturday than Dörr? “I just didn’t get the round perfectly and didn’t really hit the harassment in the last sector. I lost two tenths compared to Ben.”
Nevertheless, Glock makes it clear that the vehicle exchange was not about his own advantage, but “to understand: one part is the car and the next part that you as a driver have to adjust more on this car than you can adjust the car to the driver. To this end we – and I too – come for myself.”