Albers happy with return in DTM

Last week he drove his first race since October 3rd, 2004. After an absence of three year, Christijan Albers returned to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, a series he had been very succesful in. Albers was dissapointed with the result of the race, in which he had to retire after three laps due to a collision with Ralf Schumacher. Despite his short race, he impressed the press and the crowd, by qualifying his 2006 Audi A4 DTM in 14th place.

Albers returned to DTM racing after 2,5 years of Formula 1. It has always been his dream to race in the magical Formula 1, but in his 2,5 years in the series, he had mainly only driven at the back of the field. A year with Minard, a year with Midland and half a year with the Dutch Spyker team was enough to destroy Albers’ dream of becoming Formula 1 world champion. Albers was fired at Spyker by Colin Kolles. The man who now hired him to drive in the DTM. “He was just the messenger”, Albers said to the irony of it all.

Since his career in F1 ended, Albers hasn’t watched any of the races. He has closed the Formula 1 chapter of his life, and knows he won’t return to it. His farewell to F1 was anything but a pleasant one. According to the team, Albers was fired because one of his sponsors wasn’t paying the team. “In my opinion, they had no right to get me out of the car”, Albers said. He went to court and after months of negotiating both parties came to a settlement, on which Albers can’t say anything. “And that’s the hardest part. Nobody knows what really happened, and nobody ever will, because that’s why you have a settlement. End of story!”

Albers’ years in Formula 1 were hard years. “I got hit in the face over and over again. It was a very difficult time for me. I went to every Grand Prix with the feeling I was gonna loose and I couldn’t do much about it. There were no resources to make the team better. Last time I even payd for new springs myself, because there was no budget. You’re going to the races knowing already that you can’t improve much there. That can be hard. At the beginning of the season the fun had already gone. The only thing I miss from F1 are the cars from 2005 and 2006. Those cars gave me the feeling there was enough left I could do to improve them.”

Because no one really knows the real reason of his departure from F1, there are many speculations on his discharge. One of the biggest was the incident with the fuel hose in France, his penultimate Grand Prix. “What no one saw at that moment, was that my team mate Adrian Sutil was in front of me in the pit lane. When it’s not racing, it should never happen that two cars from one team are being called to come into the pits at the same time. It frustrated me allot. Ofcourse it was my fault, but it was a very difficult situation to deal with. The moment Sutil drove away, the told me to come forward.”

“I drove over the air hoses, over the wheel guns, it was a complete mess, all the thing you do on auto pilot normally are gone. The minute the jacks are under the car and the car is lifted, I was still in first gear and there was no way to select neutral anymore. The only thing I could do was hit the breaks, or else the mechanics doing the rear wheels would loose their fingers. Then they throw the car on the ground, and to prevent the car from stalling you have full throttle on. Because first gear was already selected, the car just took off. I was one step ahead of where I should be the whole time. But I’d rather take the fuel hose off than the fingers of those mechanics!”

After his F1 career ended, Albers decided to take a break, and even thought of quiting racing all together. “The last half year I discoverd there are a lot of other good things in life.”

But despite those good things, he returned to racing in DTM. “I was invited by Audi to test for them in DTM. When I got there, there was a good relaxed atmosphere. Ofcourse, it’s almost impossible to drive to the podium with this 2006 car. But I’m a careerist. The most important thing is that I’m loving my job again. And when that happens, the results will soon follow. Ofcourse I’d much rather wanted to have a works deal, but those were already gone. You can’t expect they pull out an other driver, just because I want to have that seat. The only thing I want now is to have fun in racing again. Participating in the 24 hours of Le Mans in 2009 might even be a possibility. At Audi, I can grow back to a higher level.”