D’Aste and Benanni’s pact fails to deliver

Sonoma race two front row-men Stefano D’Aste and Mehdi Bennani had made an arrangement to work together and pull away from the field in their BMWs, which unfortunately lasted less than a lap after the two made contact.

D’Aste’s Wiechers-Sport BMW had claimed pole position for race two, with Proteam’s Mehdi Bennani second on the grid with the top works Chevrolet of Rob Huff starting in seventh place, giving the rear-wheel drive BMWs the chance to make a break in the early stages.

Realising this, the two drivers for rival independent teams had agreed to work together in the early stages of the race.

“The second race I think could have been an easy win,” said D’Aste to TouringCarTimes. “My car was not very fast in the first two or three laps but after that it was very fast.”

“(Mehdi and I) spoke before the race and he said not to worry about him and that he wouldn’t try to overtake me for the first three laps until we got a gap to the others, and then we’d see what would happen. So I didn’t close the door, but he arrived too quick and he crashed into me.”

“I don’t know why he did this as we spoke clearly before the race, whichever starts better would stay in front and we’d use the slipstream and try to go. In the first few laps, the front-wheel drive could match us, but after that we (the BMWs) were quicker. In fact, (after the spin) I came back from last position to ninth.”

Proteam’s Mehdi Bennani said that that was the arrangement, but with D’Aste leaving the door open at Turn 6 and releasing the throttle on the straights, there was no other option but to pass him.

“I stayed on my line but when I saw the corner and he was trying to turn, I was thinking ‘don’t turn!’, but it was already done,” said Bennani. “I tried to do my best to go to the right, but I was already four tyres on the kerb, which is the maximum that I could do. Afterwards something may not have been right on the car, as the steering was not straight.”

Bennani held on to the lead until lap four, when he had his first spin of the weekend, in a meeting where that was quite an achievement for the BMW drivers who had been falling off circuit throughout most of the weekend, most notable Turn 2.

“I was trying to get a gap between me and Engstler behind, and I had to push 100%, but on lap five I pushed a little too much and lost the rear, and when I tried to come back on the track but I had to fight only to not have a big crash in the wall.”