Following the
participation of the Minardi F1 Team in
last Sunday’s spectacular Monaco aan de
Maas event in Rotterdam, fans will have
a further chance to see the Faenza squad
in action on Dutch soil this month, when
Christijan Albers makes a special
appearance at the Zandvoort round of the
DTM (German Touring Car Championship) on
Sunday, August 28.
It was announced at a
press conference, held yesterday
afternoon in Amsterdam, that Albers, an
established DTM star before making the
move to Formula One with Minardi in
2005, will take part in what is certain
to be a crowd-pleasing “F1 versus DTM”
event.
The plan calls for
the 2003 DTM series runner-up to do a
total of five laps in a Minardi Cosworth,
following which, another driver with
significant F1 connections, Mika
Hakkinen, will do a similar number of
laps in his DTM Mercedes. Fans will
then be invited to guess the difference
between the best lap times of Albers and
Hakkinen. The five with the closest
estimates will win a high-speed run on
the famous Dutch coastal circuit in a
specially equipped, two-seater Mercedes
DTM car with Albers acting as the
“chauffeur”.
“It should be another
great event, and I’m really looking
forward to giving the Zandvoort circuit
maximum attack with my Minardi Cosworth
in front of all the fans,” comments
Albers. “It will also be a lot of fun
to be back behind the wheel of a DTM car
again. I learned a lot while I was in
the Series, and I’m sure it helped make
the transition to Formula One relatively
straightforward – they may have roofs on
them and the wheels may be covered, but
they are definitely real race cars.”