Title dream already over?

From now on, the season will be tough, for Mattias Ekström: two races, two retirements, no points. With just two rounds of the 2006 season being completed, the 2004 DTM Champion seems to already have lost his title chance. While his main rivals, Bernd Schneider and Tom Kristensen, have added a lot of points to their tallies, Ekström has got the pace but lacks the luck you need to score. In both rounds, Ekström held promising positions but in the season kick-off, a suspension failure made an early end to his race and at the EuroSpeedway, the quick Swede was stopped by an empty fuel tank.

“The race went rather well,” Ekström said after the race. “I wasn’t able to fully match the pace of Mika Häkkinen and Bernd Schneider, but we had opted for another strategy.” And this strategy probably would have worked fine. Up to his retirement, Ekström held the promising second position behind the winner to-be, Bernd Schneider. “We succeeded in passing Häkkinen during the pit stops while we lost a position to Schneider. I could have finished runner-up but then I had to retire due to an empty tank.”

‘Eki’ wasn’t able to hide his disappointment. Following his retirement, the Swede lay down on the grass and desperately hid his face in his hands while probably thinking about the further course of the season. “To have scored no points twice means that my position in the fight for the title is extremely difficult.” But in spite of the Swede’s bad luck, resulting in this difficult situation, his opponents should beware of writing Ekström off as there are still another eight races to be contested.