Ekström best Audi driver at Adria
- Grid position three for the Swede
- Mike Rockenfeller is again the best driver of a 2008-spec A4
- Seven Audi A4 DTM cars on the top eleven grid positions
On May 16, 2004 Mattias Ekström started from the pole position at Adria and clinched the first victory of the Audi A4 DTM. Six years later the Swede will again start into the DTM race near the Italian lagoon city of Venice as the best Audi driver – this time from grid position three (Sunday, starting at 1:45 p.m. live on “das Erste”).
Ekström missed the pole position in the crucial fourth segment (Q4) by just 0.089 seconds after having achieved the second-best times before in both Q2 and Q3. “This shows that our performance was good,” said the Swede from Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline. “In Q4 I made no mistakes but it still wasn’t quite enough. But even from grid position three I’ve got a chance of winning – and considering that I’d already taken off my helmet after Q1 and thought I was out, P3 is definitely okay.”
Ekström had used only one set of tires in Q1 in order to save tires for the race. But because the track kept getting faster the Swede could only stand and watch from the pits how he dropped place by place and seemed to have been eliminated in 15th. But Ekström’s fortune was the misfortune of his team-mate Timo Scheider, who was retroactively moved back from second to 15th place for having started his final lap 0.1 seconds too late and was therefore no longer classified.
“Of course that was really frustrating,” said Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. “We would have probably had better chances if Timo had made it into the next segments because he set the second-best time in Q1 – unfortunately too late. We were all surprised by how much the track was changing and clearly providing more grip. We didn’t respond to this quickly enough. ‘Eki’ showed a good performance in the end. We know that it’s difficult to overtake on this track but we’ll still try and clinch the victory for which we’ve been fighting for so long now. It’ll probably be a thrilling race, particularly since rain has been predicted for tomorrow.”
The second-best Audi driver and again the best driver of a 2008-specification A4 was Mike Rockenfeller (Audi Sport Team Phoenix), who secured position five on the grid. With Oliver Jarvis, Miguel Molina, Martin Tomczyk, Markus Winkelhock and Alexandre Prémat on positions seven to eleven, seven of the nine Audi A4 DTM cars will go into race from the top eleven grid positions. Timo Scheider and Katherine Legge will start from positions 15 and 18.