Why Timo Glock suffered a heavy blow after Ben Dörr’s pole position following the McLaren car swap, and why he still feels vindicated
From an outside perspective, Timo Glock did not cut a good figure in the DTM at the Nürburgring: Although the former Formula 1 driver was finally allowed to take the wheel of his teammate Ben Dörr’s supposedly better McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, who took over Glock’s unloved car, he clearly came up short. And how!
Dörr took his first DTM pole on Sunday and was 0.725 seconds faster than his 43-year-old teammate, who only finished 19th. Does this disprove that Glock had a vehicle disadvantage? Saturday’s qualifying also points to this, with Dörr finishing seventh and Glock, who started from 13th, 0.276 seconds slower.
“In terms of results, yes,” replied technical director Robin Dörr when asked whether Glock’s previous disadvantage had been disproved. “But we now have to take the data home with us and evaluate it calmly. Then we can make a clear statement.” Glock himself, however, feels vindicated by the race weekend – and has an explanation.
“Other drivers are doing what I would do”
“My driving style, which works on every other car, isn’t really working on this car at the moment,” said the Odenwald native after retiring from Sunday’s race due to a gearbox problem. “Ben has a certain driving style and knows the car inside out, and he can implement that very well.”
What exactly does Glock mean? “Simply that you can brake more into the corner,” “With this car, you have to brake, then take your foot off the brakes, let the car roll briefly and then get back on the gas when the car allows you to. But as a driver, you naturally try to control the car a little bit with the brakes and the gas in the corner.”
This is “currently not possible with other GT3 cars, whether it’s the Porsche, the BMW or whatever.” According to Glock, this is also evident from the TV pictures: “When I look at the onboard footage, other drivers are doing nothing different from what I would do. But it’s just not possible with this car.”
How the car change affected Glock
Nevertheless, Glock makes it clear that the car allows him “more of this driving style” after the car change. “That’s why I was still the fastest on Friday. It didn’t come out of nowhere.” In addition, he says he was able to “fight with Preining & Co., which he wasn’t able to do before.“
And: According to his own statements, he was able to drive the fast times on Friday ”four, five, six laps in a row because the car allows it consistently. But then to continue in this direction and build the car more to my driving style doesn’t work.”
This bitter realization came during Sunday’s qualifying after a setup experiment. “We said, ‘Come on, whatever, screw it, let’s try something else!’” Glock described the decision on Saturday evening. “If it doesn’t work, we’ve learned something.”
Glock’s realization: “As a driver, you have to adapt to the car.”
Then “we were three tenths slower in the first and third sectors in qualifying and one of the fastest in the second sector, but that didn’t work in the slow corners,” he explains the problem. Therefore, he says, they now have to “go back to what we had on Friday and build on that. That’s the only way that works at the moment,“ Glock shrugs.
Why was he slower than Dörr in qualifying on Saturday? ”I just didn’t get the lap right and didn’t hit the chicane properly in the last sector. I lost one and a half, two tenths compared to Ben.”
Nevertheless, Glock makes it clear that the car swap was not about his own advantage, but “about understanding that one part is the car and the other part is that you as a driver have to adapt more to the car than you can adapt the car to the driver. That’s the conclusion we’ve come to – and I’ve come to that conclusion for myself as well.”
