Glock's bad luck at DTM continues
How much can go wrong with a DTM? Timo Glock was the victim of an unprecedented series of disorders during the first two DTM weekends. And the weekend at Lausitzring did not bring any change to former Formula 1 driver because he resigned from both races in his McLaren.
It was hard for the Germans last year, but this year the situation got worse. Morale certainly did not add to the fact that a team member at Lausitzring won.
"I'm speechless. I'm really losing my words. This season was not the only training where my car had no problem," wrote the pilot on Instagram. The first practice on Friday was a little taste of what was to come, because Glock was called into the box shortly before the end.
"The first ride was very good in terms of pace, Ben and I were on the same level," said Glock in Saturday talks after the race and described the encouraging start. "But when I went to the second stint, there was a loss of performance. I lost half a tenth of a second to a tenth of a second from every corner."
This problem has been bothering Glock all weekend. And that wasn't all: The problems continued in the first qualification on Saturday morning, when Glock finished the 21st and last in the race Dörr-McLaren, 0.937 seconds behind the lead car, while his team partner Ben Dörr started from the tenth place, 0.514 seconds behind him.
"I got in the car, I wanted to fix the pedal box, but it got stuck. And I couldn't adjust the brake balance. So I was only warming the front tires - not the rear tyres. As a result, we went into the qualification with too much heat in the front compared to the rear. A low speed response is a little lacking."
This plays a key role because in the first qualifying round, the drivers are trying to warm the unheated tyres from the inside using brakes, a process known as heat heating. Then they wait a few minutes in the boxes before going on the decisive qualifying rounds.
But the engine power problem, which was already evident in Friday's training, reappeared. "We lack 1.5 to 2 km / h on each straight line," says Glock. "You can tell: the engine response at low speeds is a little lacking. Once I speed up, there's a delay. And in the race, the car just stopped."
Glock's disorder helped his young teammate Ben Dörr win, whose McLaren 720 S Evo seems to be in perfect condition: Since Glock's car broke down on the track, Full Course Yellow mode was activated on the track, which was blown off exactly when Ben Dörr, Marco Mapelli and Ricardo Feller entered the boxing alley.
Due to 15-second penalty for Mapelli and Feller, the second driver of McLaren was declared a winner. The cause of Glock's malfunction was a short cut caused by a faulty sensor cable to the data recorder.
Sunday didn't turn out any better for Glock: He ended up 20 with 0.793 seconds of loss. In the race he had a veteran, who had one new set of tyres left and two very well preserved smooth tyres after he chose the tyres for the first stint in the rain and soon resigned in Saturday's race, in the final stages he drove in front of his team partner Ben Dörr in 16th place.
The young man who started from the 14th place faced a 20-kilo load of victory - and had no new tyres left from the previous day. Glock did not finish the race again: According to the team, he had to withdraw shortly before the end due to the failure of the newly installed turbocharger. It's not the first time Glock's McLaren suffered a turbo disorder in Zandvoort's first qualification.