Photo:

Ekström on the coming premiere

By

The DTM season starts this coming weekend and Mattias Ekström is one of the DTM-drivers getting ready for it. There are a couple of news as we have reported earlier for this season. The biggest thing is the qualifying which is changed to F1-style.

The qualifying is divided in to three sessions. The first session is 14 minutes long where the 14 fastest drivers move on to next session. Next session is 10 minutes long and the 8 quickest drivers move on to the final session where they have seven minutes to set their time. That decides the grid for the race on the following day.

-You can’t be a coward and sit out the others, you have to get out there and give maximum to set a time the others can’t beat, Mattias Ekström said.

The times between each session are reset after each session, so the driver can’t be satisfied with one quick lap in one of the sessions. Each driver is only allowed five sets of tyres for the entire qualifying sessions and refuelling is only allowed for the first session.

-You have to reload after each session and try to go out and think that it is a new session and that you will out pace everyone else, Ekström continued.

Between each session the driver only gets a break of seven minues and the mechanics will have a lot to do in little time.

-There will be high demmands on me as driver, but even higher demans on the team who will get it very stressful in the pits, Ekström said.