Ralf gets a point!

Ralf Schumacher finally broke his dry spell in DTM at the Nurburgring:

[dtm.gpupdate.net]

Hope he finally has the hang of it and starts to score with some regularity. The DTM machines must have seemed quite alien compared to a F1 machine...



"There are some pikeys there at Turn 10 putting tarmac down - what do you think of that?" - Martin Brundle

Yeah I saw the points last week and saw he had zero, which kind of shocked me. Don't watch so I don't know if he is with a lesser team that is given him these results or if its just what other have said that he is no good.

All I know is that he is driving a 2007 Mercedes and their top drivers are all in the 2008 model. If it bears any similarity to F1 in that respect then Ralf has obsolete equipment, though I'm sure the drop off isn't as huge in DTM from year to year as it is in F1...



"There are some pikeys there at Turn 10 putting tarmac down - what do you think of that?" - Martin Brundle

Well as I am watching DTM quite regularly, maybe I can tell you a little more about the car situation. Each of the two manufacturers, Merc and Audi, runs four 2008 cars, which usually means the top 8 places and with it, the points, go to the eight 2008 cars. Then there are 5 2007 Merc and 4 2007 Audis, all of which score very rarely or not at all. Paffett, Jarvis and Winkelhock have put in some great efforts, but in general you will only score in a 2007 car if one of the 2008s doesn't get the act together. Then there are two 2006-spec Audis, and they really don't stand a chance, even though Albers has had a few great qualifyings and Legge was well underway last weekend before she collided with Engel.

Now Ralf is driving a 2007 Merc, and compared to his team-mates he hasn't done so bad. Apart from him and Paffett, only one 2007 Merc has scored, that was Lauda at Norisring - just because Ralf retired in front of him and Paffett got disqualified.

That weekend Ralf did look quite quick by the looks of it ( thats me checking fp times etc )so I too hope he has got a hang of it

---

"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

Thanks for the info Jackal! I would love to watch DTM, but if SPEED channel is showing it at all I am not aware of it.. Did see highlights of the race on the DTM website though...



"There are some pikeys there at Turn 10 putting tarmac down - what do you think of that?" - Martin Brundle



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2008 01:45AM by Jagdpanzer.

I lost my interest to DTM in point when Finnish media (yeah, once again they are doing some @#$%&) started bashing Ralf already after first races, because he havent been able to reach so good results as Mika did.

If they just would also remember to mention that Mika had Mercedes-Benz tongue so deep in his ass already for over 10 years that it wont ever come out. But this is just how things works in here.. :S

Kimi, so, Massa Fernando Sebastian is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?

IWE schrieb:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If they just would also remember to mention that
> Mika had Mercedes-Benz tongue so deep in his ass
> already for over 10 years that it wont ever come
> out. But this is just how things works in here..
> :S


Exactly, plus they should have mentioned that Hakkinen was always having a current year's car and not a one-year old one. Measured that way, Hakkinen's results were ok, maybe good even, but definitely far from outstanding.

I hope Ralf can somehow return to pre-2003 form where he used to have some flashes of great driving that would catch people off guard and he'd just dominate a race.

Just feel I have to mention Ralf got another two points last weekend - of course greatly helped by Kristensen's crash plus the Green/Ekström penalties, but it has to be said he was, together with Paffett, one of the faster 07 Merc drivers and the only one keeping out of trouble. However, with Rockenfeller and Premat driving their 07 Audis to fifth and sixth, maybe that kind of puts Ralf back in his place (although you never know just which circuit layout favours which cars). So all in all, he's not doing to bad if you look only at the 07 or 06 drivers and forget about the 08-cars:

Paffett (Merc 07) 8 pts
Rockenfeller (Audi 07) 6 pts
Winkelhock (Audi 07) 6 pts
Jarvis (Audi 07) 5 pts
Premat (Audi 07) 4 pts
Ralf (Merc 07) 3 pts
Lauda (Merc 07) 1 pt

Engel, Stoddart (both Merc 07) and Albers, Legge (both Audi 06) no points.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2008 04:18PM by Jackal.

Ralf had a good race, starting from P17, finished P9 and got finally
P7, but the 2007 Audis are most better than the 2007 Mercedes, except
Gary Paffett, so let´s see what will be next year.


Happy racing from Germany !!!

Shame most of you guys can't watch DTM, it's kinda awesome. Not always, but mostly there are always some guys driving around there and pushing some collegues to wherever they can, even title contenders (like last weekend Green and Ekström). And the driver's quality seems very high, for example a known Le Mans legend like Kristensen must really push all the time, with different results.

And really, that Audi is just amazingly awesome, the roadversion A4 is already very beautiful and somewhat grim looking, but look at that angry face:





________________________________________

Some say... he's even smaller than 20kb.
And some say... he's so offensive he could get you into trouble...
The only thing we know is that he's called...

THE SIG


Felipe Massa, World Champion 15:34:11pm- 15:34:21pm.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2008 10:49PM by Sapo.

The DTM I have seen is good, but I do reckon they need to get another manufacturer or two - I want a grid full of potential winners, rather than broken down into two or three tiers which rarely are able to outperform (although they do more now than they used to)



RedSam
Winner: Not the Nickv Comment of the Year 2009
Due to the voting system in Germany, Governments are always made up of coalitions of different parties. At the last election, an almost unprecidented result saw the CDU/CSU (rough equivilant of the Conservatives) go into Government with the SPD (rough equivilant of Labour)

They won't get another make in the series. Hell they are closing to losing Audi through the political bitching between the series and its owners.

The cars are great, as are the drivers, but often the racing is dull. And they really need to stop going to garbage like Barcelona and start doing things properly again.

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Do you think they might make the same mistake they did in the 90's and try to expand too quickly?

Regressing back into Germany/Austria might help, I guess...



RedSam
Winner: Not the Nickv Comment of the Year 2009
Due to the voting system in Germany, Governments are always made up of coalitions of different parties. At the last election, an almost unprecidented result saw the CDU/CSU (rough equivilant of the Conservatives) go into Government with the SPD (rough equivilant of Labour)

The mistake they made in the 90s was asking the FIA and FOM to help. They deliberately killed off the series

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