Hi all. I am so very disappointed in my driving on the Ring last night, there are just no words to describe the feeling. It was my first race on the Ring for DSZ ever as I missed last years event and I was really looking forward in driving it, as you might have picked up from earlier posts. What was supposed to be a very cool, but difficult, race turned out to be a small personal drama. I think that maybe my reasonable start itself was the only highlight, as it was all downhill from there. In turn one I completely missed my breakpoint and had to struggle not to hit anyone there. When I finally turned in Bas and some Ferrari (I know, again, we can't seem to get rid of those red buggers) came sliding into my side so my from my too late braking slightly damaged Lotus got damaged a little more. With my bent Lotus I continued the race only to get tangled up with a Ferrari (... I know ...) in turn 3 which was just your average race accident. He was on my left, coming a little into my direction and I did the opposite. We hit softly and that was it. No one to blame I guess. Just bad luck. So on we went only to put the poor Lotus on it's imaginary roof two turns later. In other words this race was no more than a couple of turns old and I had already used up one of my precious Lotus'. These are the moment where I have to remain calm and just take things as they are. Count to ten, blow off some steam, that kind of stuff. Unfortunately I was a little too eager (something I usually tell Bas not to be ;-) to catch up that Ferrari and was slightly frustrated about loosing a Lotus so early on in this race. So I made a couple more small mistakes and was almost behind Stefan's Eagle when I missed another break point and put the Lotus in the hedge on it's roof again. Counting to ten was not going to be much of a help at this point anymore ... Aarrgghhh!!!! Right. My second and last Lotus was freshly put on the track as I was smashing the pedal down, burning rubber and was on my way again. The rest of that lap was okay I guess, no big or costly mistakes there but in the first part of the second lap I did it again. First of all I just hit a fence somewhere and in a deep turn I lost the rear of the car and crashed into the only tree for miles around ... And it's not that I didn't know that it was there people, I just could not help sliding into it as I did quite a lot when I was doing my first laps on the Ring with my BRM. I mean we are not supposed to crash into that tree anymore, it's that easy to avoid, really. So that was it, Biek was finished, done, over with, ready to go home. Had this been a real race I (IF I had been able to get back to the pits after those two near death experiences) would have thrown my helmet in a corner, pushed away the photographers and slammed the door of my motor home shut behind me. Or would I? This was after all 1967 ... No I probably would have walked back all the way to the pits, put down my helmet and, because there was no place to hide back then, calmly explain to the press what had happened and why I was so mad on myself. Our next race will be next year so there is some time for preparing and trust me: I will be more ready than I have been for any race yet. This was a one time DNF and will NEVER happen again. I have no hopes in winning a DSZ for quite some time to come but until I do I AM going to finish all of them. No no, I'm not mad, I'm just really really disappointed!