Commentator’s Curse.

“I’ve got no grip” was the frequent cry from the drivers’ rostrum during practice for this week’s Slot.it DTM round. “Urgh, I’ve still got no grip” was what that cry morphed into during the race. Yep, the spec Slot.it C1 tyres for this class definitely don’t have much grip on Molesey’s track, but that hasn’t stopped them giving us some brilliant racing. Better still, the racing hasn’t been the crash-fest that some thought the tyres might make it.

At the front, David, Simon and Chris were barely separable on pace, David and Chris both recording 8.930 laps to take a fastest-lap point each, with Simon just 0.022 slower.

Heat 1 set the tone, Simon and David fighting side by side in group 1 for overall honours. In group 2, a monumental three-way scrap between Graham, Mario and Jim lasted until Jim went to pieces in heat 5. Gripless or not, the DTM cars were putting on a great display.

At the head of the race, Simon scuppered his chances by crashing early in heat 2 and then again in heat 3, losing roughly 9 seconds in total, almost exactly the 8.99 seconds he finished behind David in the overall result.

The final heat is where it all went wrong for group 2 (Graham, Mario, Jim, Joss, Neil). With ten laps of wildly sideways driving done and everyone still separated by no more than a few car’s lengths, David, marshalling, commented “I can’t believe that nobody has taken anyone off yet.” He should have kept quiet.

A nanosecond after David’s comment, Jim punted Neil into Mario, all three thumping the outside wall hard and gifting a gap to Graham and Joss. Jim recovered quickly, but Neil and Mario struggled to find their rhythm and lost several seconds. It was enough for Mario to drop to 6th overall behind Graham, and Neil to fall to last place behind Joss. They could have blamed Jim, or at least the tyres, but instead, most of the blame went David’s way for opening his mouth. As ever, the commentator’s curse is never far away!