Still, we were on the pace, not a million miles away during practice and qualifying, and our race pace wasn’t bad either – I had a good fight with both Lucas Luhr and Markus Winkelhock throughout it. In that way it was good to end the year on a high – I had a good race and I battled hard – but it also gave me a few thoughts on what I need to work on and change for next year.
One big change for 2008 is that Mika Hakkinen has decided to hang up his helmet. I think all of us were pretty sad at ‘Stars & Cars’ when he announced his retirement and then went out and drove his championship-winning car around the streets of Stuttgart for one lap. It was very emotional. We’ll all miss Mika at Mercedes, and the series will too – he was our big superstar yet such a nice guy with it. I’ll certainly miss him in the team, but we’ve still got drivers like Bernd Schneider, Bruno Spengler and Jamie Green, so we’re not short of talent!
Looking back, I have to admit this year wasn’t everything I had hoped it would be, but it had its positive moments and I certainly still learned a hell of a lot. I was a lot closer to the pace at every race this year. It’s very easy to look at qualifying and results and to think ‘hey, it wasn’t that great a year’, but then when I look behind those and realise what I’ve achieved in certain circumstances I have to be happy with it. The DTM is incredibly tough, but I know I can achieve results there and 2007 just confirmed that. For me overall, it was another good year, and I’m feeling really positive ahead of next year.
I think my qualifying performances this year were a lot better, and my overall pace was a lot better – I was battling a lot more against the other guys in the races. The ’05 car was a lot closer this year than the ’04 car was last year; I think the whole weight penalty rule made a big difference to the two-year-old cars and meant we could fight harder. That enabled me to learn so much more about the car, and in the DTM you never stop learning.
![Susie Stoddart - TV-Spielfilm AMG Mercedes [pic credit: DTM Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/323722.jpg)
