Last weekend the annual DTM season finale took place at the Hockenheimring and Johannes Seidlitz was fully motivated for the race weekend having a new helmet design. Johannes did his usual program in the roll-out. In Saturday’s morning free practice the track was wet at the beginning. The conditions were ok for Johannes. He did some laps on wet tyres after that he and the KOLLES Futurecom-TME – Team waited for the 4.574 km track to dry. At the end of the free practice Johannes did some laps on slick tyres although the track was still wet in some sectors. The qualifying didn’t go so well like it could have been. He lost his left earplug under the helmet. Without the earplug it was very loud and painful for Johannes and due to the time limit he had to do his two qualifying stints in those conditions. Johannes wasn’t satisfied with his qualifying because he wasn’t able to do a perfect lap in those conditions. Johannes did a long run in the warm-up on the damp track. He started the 39 lap race from P20. At the beginning of the race Johannes had to go round his team mate Christian Bakkerud who spun at the north corner (Nordkurve).

In the second lap Johannes overtook two competitors and was already on P16. In the meantime the 19-year-old driver was already on P15, was driving very well and with consistent and quick lap times. Johannes did his mandatory pit stops in lap 12 and 25. The stops were brilliant. After his first stop Johannes spun at turn 2 which costed him time. In lap 32 the safety car came on to the track because Susie Stoddart has hit the tyre piles in turn 1. The race was restarted in lap 36. Johannes did a great re-start and passed Christian Bakkerud. Johannes and his team mate Bakkerud fought shoulder to shoulder. The duel was hard but fair. After all Johannes finished just behind his experienced team mate and achieved with position 13 his best DTM result till now. “I am happy with the weekend. The race was great fun and I achieved my best result. Especially the duels in the race were super. I learned a lot this season and after all I am pleased. Let’s wait what is going to happen next year. My aim is to be in the DTM again. I would like to thank the whole KOLLES Futurecom-TME – Team for the great teamwork this season.“

For the first time the DTM was at the 3.801km circuit in Burgundy last weekend. Johannes Seidlitz started optimistically into the race weekend which began for him as always with a roll-out on Friday. Johannes and the KOLLES Futurecom-TME – Team did pit stop practice which worked well. Furthermore Johannes tried to do as many laps as possible till the end of the roll-out. The free practice took place in wet conditions. For Johannes it was difficult because he has never driven a DTM race car in the wet. To complicate matters further the circuit Dijon-Prenois is a very fast race track. Johannes did several short stints and together with his engineer he analysed the so important data. In total he did 43 laps. The first priority was not to do fast laps but to collect data. Johannes was satisfied with the practice in the wet. The stints were good and he learned a lot. The qualifying took place in dry conditions and Johannes got along. “The qualifying worked well for me. I was able to improve with my second set of tyres and I was only a bit behind Tomas Kostka.“ Johannes started the race from P19 in front of his team mate Christian Bakkerud.

Johannes did a long run in the warm-up before the race which worked well. The start of the race wasn’t so good for Johannes. He couldn’t see the starting lights and his engineer had to tell him on the radio when to start. In the first lap he stayed away from all quarrelings. In lap ten there was a duel between Katherine Legge and Christian Bakkerud. The result of the duel was that Bakkerud turned around into the gravel. A few seconds later the misfortune happened. “I missed the breaking point which caused me going off line onto the dirty part of the track and the rear of my car slipped.“ So Johannes turned backwards into the gravel with his race car and hit the car of his team mate Christian Bakkerud who was unluckily still in the gravel of turn one. That meant the end of the race. “In my opinion my weekend was planed totally different but I have learned a lot. The car will be ready again for Hockenheim.“

The DTM season finale will take place at the Hockenheimring from the 23rd to the 25th October.