Mattias Ekström: “We were too slow”

Mattias Ekström took a dominant pole position ahead of the DTM race at Nürburgring. But the Swede only managed seventh when the race was over.
“My start was poor. Afterwards, I wasn’t able to downshift properly while braking into turn one. My front wheels locked and I lost more places,” said Ekström.

Ekström left the first series of corner in seventh position, a position he had to settle for.

“After that, everything actually went according to plan, but we were too slow,” said Ekström.

Ekström was third in the championship ahead of Nürburgring, Audi’s best hope against the leading Mercedes duo of Bruno Spengler and Jamie Green.

But seventh position only gave the Swede two points which dropped him to fifth, 19 points behind championship leader Spengler.

“That wasn’t what we’d been hoping for,” said Ekström.

Audi Motorsport boss Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich was not happy after the race at Nürburgring.

“That was a very disappointing race for us – the worst we’ve delivered this year, although we arrived here with great expectations. Now, we’ve got to look ahead, do a thorough job of working on the issues and put ourselves back in a position of being capable of winning 14 days from now at Zandvoort. There are still 60 points to be awarded for victories in the championship,” said Ullrich.