• Home
• Race reports
• Media
• About Jamie
• Contact

Fighting fourth at Brands

Jamie Green claimed a solid fourth place finish in his home DTM race at Brands Hatch. Jamie set the fastest time of the Mercedes-Benz drivers during qualifying, but failed to produce a perfect lap in the pole position shoot-out, which meant he started from fifth. With overtaking extremely difficult on the short and challenging Brands Indy layout, he knew it would be a hard day’s work.

Jamie’s job become even harder when he dropped a place to Audi’s Oliver Jarvis at the start, and with the championship fight building to a climax, Jamie knew he had to pass his fellow Brit as soon as possible if he was to stand a chance of taking a decent points haul. With this in mind he executed the overtaking move of the race as he went around the outside of Jarvis through the fearsome Paddock Hill Bend.

“That corner is challenging enough when you are running on your own, so to pass someone around the outside there is pretty special. I was really pleased with that one,” Jamie admitted.

Once by Jarvis, Jamie quickly caught the cars ahead of him. Normally he would have pitted early in the hope of making a place in the pits, but with light rain falling, and the threat of that getting harder, the sensible option was to pit late.

This he did, and emerged ahead of Audi’s Martin Tomczyk. But almost as soon as he came out of the pits, Jamie ran wide at Paddock and through the gravel, which allowed Tomczyk back through.

The rain stopped before the second pit window, and this time Jamie pitted early. Rejoining on a rare piece of clear track allowed Jamie to set a series of blisteringly quick laps, which moved him back ahead of Tomczyk and Mercedes team-mate Bruno Spengler. Jamie was now in the fight for third with former champ, Audi’s Mattias Ekstrom.

Ekstrom was on a completely different strategy, and would pit as late as possible. Despite his warn tyres, the drying track meant he was actually getting faster, and when he finally made his stop he rejoined just ahead of Jamie in third. With Jamie’s final set of tyres having to last 40 laps he was in no position to attack, and he settled for fourth, maintaining his excellent record of scoring in every race this year.

“Aside from dropping the place to Jarvis and that little mistake after my first stop, I drove an almost perfect race,” said Jamie. “So while I didn’t get a podium, I have to say I’m pretty pleased with fourth in the circumstances. I lost out in qualifying really. I had the pace to start in the top three, if I’d have done that a podium would have been possible.”

Jamie remains second in the points, but is now nine behind leader Timo Scheider, who won at Brands. But with three races still to go, Jamie remains optimistic.

“The Mercedes was pretty much as quick as the Audi here, despite being 10kg heavier. We’ll be the same weight at Barcelona, so I think we should be competitive there and at the final two races too.”

It’s three weeks until the next round in Spain, the scene of Jamie’s first DTM race win 12 months ago.

“It doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s good to go in there knowing that I’ve been successful there in the past. Hopefully I will win there again.”