In his latest column for Crash.net, Irish driver Emmet O’Brien looks back at his second ‘home’ event on the World Touring Car Championship calendar in Germany…
The Oschersleben meeting was a little bit like my second home race in a way. It’s my team’s - Wiechers Sports
BMW - local circuit and it’s where we did all our pre-season testing.
I arrived in Berlin Tegal Airport on the Thursday and drove straight to Magdeburg, the nearest city to Oschersleben. It’s a beautiful city and my hotel was in the countryside with a river running around it and an old tram line also ran to the door. I couldn’t have been staying in a more relaxed environment that’s for sure! On the Thursday I attended an autograph session in the Allee Centre in Magdeburg with some of the other WTCC drivers and there was big attention, of course, for the German drivers.
On Saturday morning in free practice one and two I was playing around with set-up as it was wet. Coming from Brands I was hoping it would be wet the whole weekend! We put on the Brands wet set-up and tried it in free practice one but it was like I was driving a different car! There is a simple explanation to it and that was – different circuit, different tarmac and different temperatures. The circuit is a lot slower than Brands and therefore the car needed to be a lot softer in areas to grip in the tight corners.
