"From Spa, it was off to Brno in the Czech Republic. A new track for me but one Audi were strong at in 2004. The track is great, nice variety of corners and also some decent straights and overtaking points. Quickest in first practice was a good sign and were able to follow that up with a seventh on the starting grid. Apart from a hit at turn one from Reuter, things were looking very good for my first podium until I exited from my first stop right behind third placed Frentzen - I then received the message 'speeding in the pit lane, drive through penalty'. As you can imagine, I was very annoyed and suggested there was a mistake, not sure if they understood my Scottish but I had to serve the penalty anyway. This dropped me out of the points and I was able to come back to seventh. Very disappointing as a podium was virtually guaranteed. The problem, the car overshot the 80km/h limit by 0.5 km/h for 0.3 of a second!!! However, rules are rules.
"Le Mans is, as usual, one of the best and biggest races of the year, but under the new regulations, the weight and power handicap the R8 had, would mean that we would have our work cut out to win. In fact, in qualifying, we were five seconds from pole position. I thought third behind the two Pescarolo’s prototypes was a good effort and it was close. The sister Champion R8 of Tom Kristensen was down in eighth position only one second behind. This looked like it could be the end of the R8 reign in Le Mans. However, the car was the best it has ever been round there and I think we pushed harder for longer than ever before. It was fantastic to drive. Emmanuelle was on the pace at the beginning, and accidents and a gearbox failure in the 'Pesca' camp things were going our way, but a small hiccup early on let the sister car into the lead and left us chasing.
"After about 15 hours and having caught up nearly 1 ½ minutes and with the Pesca on the return just behind, the race was unfortunately decided against us with a right front tyre delaminating on the Mulsanne straight at about 200mph. The damage of a tyre coming apart at that speed was incredible but the car got back. The team repaired it really quickly and we continued to finish third. TK won his seventh Le Mans and the Audi R8 record continued, but the Pesca… that will be a very hard team to beat in 2006... As for me, I now have three Le Mans podium trophies and can assure you the winning one
is the only one!"
