Hello dear fans, I had a very special weekend at Brands Hatch. For me it was a real rollercoaster ride with many highs and lows and a very unhappy end. But such things are part of motorsport and with a little more luck I might have been in the points. It started very promising in free practice.

With a very good performance and a 7th position, we were very pleased. Of course, we knew within the team that the others would go quicker in qualifying. But we knew what had to be changed on the car to also improve the good lap time later.

The qualifying started well. I managed to qualify for the second segment comfortably in 8th position. I had a very good feeling, and it has to be said my team did a great job again with the set up and also the mechanics did an outstanding job. Unfortunately we had some bad luck in Q2, on my first flying lap I slid over the exit curb in turn 3 with my right rear tire. For security reasons, driving over the curb was not allowed, so my lap time was cancelled.

When I started my second run in Q2 I came out of the pits just ahead of Garry Paffet. My brand-mate, was on his fast lap and I had to move out of the way as quick as possible. In the so-called "out lap" - the first lap out of the pits - I then tried to get some distance to Garry, so he would not block me during his "in lap" back to the pits. Unfortunately, because of this I could not bring the tires and the brakes to the optimum temperature. On my flying lap, I got stuck in between 3^rd and 4^th gear while downshifting, with this mistake my qualifying was over and we were only in 13th position.

During warm-up before the race I had a good feeling in my C-Class. I went out with very used tires, so it was clear that the times could not be very good, but the long run showed us the setup was fine.

So we all had a positive feeling for the race, which however began disastrously for me. First, the red light stayed on very long, so I almost had a jump start. Alexandre Premat next to me was a little fast and started while red was still on, but I managed to overtake him in the first lap again. After that I had a calm and uneventful race for most of the time, but a good race. With fast lap times and a good pit work of my crew I came up to 9th position.

The safety car period shortly before the end, gave me the chance to get very close to Markus Winkelhock, and attack him after the restart. However, Ralf Schumacher was behind me with the same idea. I saw him in the mirror coming closer and closer with really too much speed and so I decided to stay on the outside of the corner, otherwise he would have crashed into me. Instead of me, Ralf crashed into Winkelhock and spun him around. To avoid the two cars, I had only the possibility to on the inside of the corner. Unfortunately, however, Ralf was still standing on the accelerator and hit me on my rear left spinning me around too.

The whole situation was very annoying, especially since Ralf had never hit me, if he had simply come off the accelerator. Finally, he was responsible for the crash. After the race, he immediately came to me to apologize. That ends the situation for me. However, I'm very sorry for the whole team, because without the accident I would have been 8th and it would have been a very welcome point. It also means the guys have to put in some extra work to repair the car before our next race in Barcelona.

I'm really looking forward to the race in Spain. The track is not easy to drive and includes many difficult corners. Let's hope that I can go there and get more points.

Keep racing!
Maro