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What could have been for Jamie...

Jamie Green added three more points to his DTM tally after his home race at Brands Hatch, but for an unfortunately timed red flag in qualifying it could have been a completely different story.

Green recorded the fastest lap in qualifying, but seconds before he crossed the line to set his time, the session had been red flagged after Martin Tomczyk’s Audi was beached in the gravel. This meant Jamie’s time was cancelled. When the session was restarted Jamie tried to repeat his earlier effort but he couldn’t and lined up seventh for the race.

“I was disappointed that I couldn’t repeat the time, but my engineers told me that no-one improved at the end of the session, so that’s that,” he said.

Jamie didn’t make the best of starts and dropped two spots to ninth, but a good move inside Markus Winkelhock took him back to eighth at the first turn and he was looking good to make up another spot when he was hit front behind at turn two.

“I don’t know who hit me, but it did quite a lot of damage to the rear of my car. It’s hard to know exactly how much difference it made, but it was quite a hit.”

Jamie’s Mercedes-Benz team opted to bring him in early for the first of his two mandatory pitstops, but his pace on his second set of tyres wasn’t strong and he dropped a place to eventual winner Bernd Schneider. Things got worse when Audi’s Christian Abt rejoined just ahead of him. With overtaking very tough on the short Brands Hatch Indy circuit, Jamie had to wait for his second stop for a chance to attack.

“The car felt much better on the third set and I was really able to push. I think I had three clear laps and during this time I set the second fastest lap of the race. This let me leap ahead of Abt and Alex Premat and into sixth. I soon pulled clear of them, but Bruno Spengler in fifth was too far ahead and the team told me to concentrate on bringing the car home in the points.”

Sixth place equals three points, increasing Jamie’s score for the season to 7.5 and moving him to seventh in the standings. Next up is the unique challenge of Norisring a super-fast street circuit. Last year Jamie was on course for a win when he was taken out by Abt. He’s hoping he can be strong there again.

“Our car was very fast there last year. We’ll be carrying a bit more weight this time, but hopefully I can repeat that level of performance. It’s a bit of an odd-ball track with only four corners, but I’m quite confident for the race.”