Ultra short Brands Hatch next up for DTM

The 1.9 kilometer Brands Hatch Indy circuit hosts the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters this weekend. A total of 98 laps will be driven in the race on the short and fast track. Bruno Spengler of Mercedes is the hunted driver this weekend, leading the championship with seven points ahead of Audi driver Martin Tomczyk.

“I finished second last year, which was a decent result. The layout is quite interesting: for one thing, it’s quite short, so the whole field tends to be quite bunched up. You can’t afford to make a single mistake here. If you’re just a tenth of a second down, you’ll find yourself several places back on the grid,” said Spengler.

Tomczyk is the man on the hunt, but lost ground to Spengler in the previous race at Nürburgring with fifth position while Spengler finished second. The winner of the previous race was an Audi driver, but neither of the two main Audi title contenders Tomczyk or Timo Scheider. Instead it was Mattias Ekström who climbed on top of the podium for the first time since May 2010.

“We had a really strong race weekend last time and I hope to continue in the same style. I always enjoy being there [Brands Hatch]. It’s no doubt one of the race tracks on which you can have the greatest fun. It’s extremely short and produces very low lap times, which means we driving a very large number of laps. Traffic is dense and tactics are important,” said Ekström.

Four race weekends remain of the DTM 2011 and a total of 40 points. Seven points separate Spengler and Tomczyk, Scheider is 18 points behind and Jamie Green a further five points behind. Unless either of the top two breaks their record of not retiring from a single race, it is going to be tough for anyone to catch them.