Quote:
Originally Posted by Westheim
[a singular expletive]
Well, I tried.  |
Don't feel bad, Westy. You have given me an opportunity to play one of my favorite games; a puzzle really:
Decipher the post! Let's begin.
"DTM" came easy; this is
Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters "a sports car racing series based in Germany, with rounds elsewhere in Europe".
Mika Pauli Häkkinen is a Finnish former racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1991 to 2001. Nicknamed "the Flying Finn", Häkkinen competed in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters from 2005 to 2007 after retiring from Formula One.
Jean Robert Alesi is a French former racing driver who also competed in Formula One from 1989 to 2001, after which he competed in DTM from 2002 to 2006.
Thus the reference to "retirement home" of the 2000s. How am I doing so far?
But now for a tough stretch. Timo, Timo . . . Oh, that's a given name, not a surname. D'oh! It is none other than Timo Glock, of the family that makes Glock Pistols, named by The Gun Zone (an American publication) as "
best pistols for concealed carry"!
I jest, sadly.
Timo Glock is yet another alumnus of F1 racing who came from there to DTM. (I am starting to detect a pattern here.) Unlike the others, Glock is still participating in the DTM.
It was at this point that I realized "Timo 'Is that ...?' Glock" is one man with an appellation separating his first and last names. I was thinking of this as two men, as if a comma was inserted: "Timo 'Is that ...?', Glock". So, "Is that ...?" refers to Timo Glock, not just somebody named Timo.
But I did find the source of "Is that ...?"! Here it is, from his Wikipedia article:
Quote:
Infamous season finale moment
In the final race of the 2008 season, the Brazilian Grand Prix, Glock was seventh with a few laps to go when rain started covering the track. Glock remained on the track with dry-weather tyres, while most of the other drivers, including championship contender Lewis Hamilton, opted to pit for wet tyres. The decision to stay out moved Glock up the order, ahead of Hamilton on track. Starting the final lap, Glock was fourth but was struggling on his dry-weather tyres as the rain intensified. He was passed by Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton in the final corners. Hamilton regained fifth place to win the 2008 Drivers' Championship and eclipsed rival Felipe Massa by one point, while Glock trailed behind in sixth. The incident led to significant backlash from many Brazilian fans who were in support of Massa, insinuating Glock was at fault for Hamilton's win. Glock revealed years later that he and the Toyota team members had a police escort them off the country to protect him from further abuse. During live ITV coverage of the race, commentator Martin Brundle shouted "Is that Glock going slowly?" during Hamilton's overtake on him, which would become an internet meme.
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Next,
Jack Aitken. This guy is significantly younger than the others, only 30 years old. It seems he has struggled to rise beyond F2 racing; he was in Formula 1 for a few years but only as a test and reserve driver. He had a serious accident in 2021 and has bounced around since then, appearing in DTM in 2023 and 2024, but not this year, hence the "one-and-done" appellation for him?
So now we arrive at Mr.
Ayhancan Güven. Unlike the others, and despite being Turkish, he seems "home grown" in that he is not a refugee/retiree from F1 racing, but a rising star who "
moved up [my bold] to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, where he would record one podium finish at the
Sachsenring".
You adequately describe his exploits of this year and his chances for the championship. He needed to win this recent race to take the prize. Enter the villain,
Marco Wittmann.
Now, like Cobra, I am an American and therefore precluded from viewing your video. If it was about guns, there would be no problem for us, I am sure. But I believe that I can piece together, if not what happened in that final lap battle, at least the result.
For, way at the bottom of the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters page on Wikipedia, Mr. Ayhancan Güven is listed as the
2025 DTM Champion! And a bit more digging revealed the page for the
2025 DTM season itself. On that page is the race calendar for 2025 and the final entry is race #8,
Hockenheimring which took place Oct 4-5. (Two separate races? The
web site talks about "DTM Races 15+16".)
I think it was two races because the results page has Güven defeating his arch-nemesis Wittmann by +0.169 in RACE 2, thus winning the DTM Championship:
But what happened in that final lap? Will us Americans ever know?
I was not able to find any video of the entire race but I did find the
post-race press conference on YouTube. (For some reason, the first 26 minutes of this video is "COMING UP: HOCKENHEIMRING" so skip to about 26:15.) At about 30:20, Güven is asked what happened in that final lap and he goes on at length in his response. Unfortunately, much of what he said is way over my head.
But, what ho! A bit more scrolling, and I found another video of at least part of the race,
DTM 2025 featuring the duel between Güven and Wittmann, Güven's victory, and the aftermath. The first few moments of that video are intense, although I don't know if it captures the incident to which you refer. (Maybe around the 50-second mark? There was some contact there, I think.)
Well, that's that. So, how does all of this make us feel good? I guess, if you are a fan of Güven and DTM, you feel good. Me, I feel good just from having solved this puzzle!
Of course, without Wikipedia, I would be scratching my head and saying "Whatever".
