Gary’s weekend began slowly in Friday’s tests, and he could only manage the 13th and 10th fastest time in the two 90-minute sessions. He was not panicking, however, and had faith that his team would help him turn things around.

“We did struggle a little to find the perfect set-up, which is very important at this track because it is the most abrasive on the calendar,” admitted Gary. “We worked on the race set-up, and did a long run that was okay, but not as good as we’ve managed before. It was more competitive than it looked from the laptimes.”

The factory HWA Mercedes team got to work overnight, and set-up changes transformed his C-Class racecar ahead of qualifying on Saturday.

“We changed the car a lot for Saturday, and besides a little oversteer we ended up half a second quicker than anyone else in the morning’s practice session,” said Gary. “It’s nice to change the car and get it right first time, so we made sure we didn’t touch it again before qualifying.”

In the preliminary session, Gary set the pace straight away, with a stunning 1m52.173s that no-one was able to beat. That meant he would go last in the top 10 Super Pole session, and despite variable track conditions, thanks to a brief rain shower, Gary did it again with a 1m52.191s lap that was almost two-tenths of a second faster than the opposition could muster.

“I had to look three times at the read-out on the dashboard when it said 1m52.1secs,” said Gary. “It was such a brilliant time. I knew Frentzen was the man to beat, but I didn’t know his time I just decided to concentrate on the job in hand. I made a few little mistakes, but the car has been brilliant in the final sector of the lap all day, and that’s where I found the time. To be on pole with 40-kilos of success ballast in the car is a credit to the team.”

It all went wrong at the start of the race, however, when Gary’s car lurched forward while the red lights were still on. As per the regulations, that automatically meant a jump start penalty, despite the fact he was not the fastest off the line and did not gain any advantage.

“It was my mistake,” said Gary. “I started to go when the last red light came on. It was a mistake that cost me a podium finish, and it turned my race into damage limitation rather than going for the victory as I had planned.”

Gary dropped to 13th position after taking a drive-through pit penalty, but impressively fought his way back to fourth position by the chequered flag.

“My first set of tyres were not the best, and I got blocked by one of the Audis during the race, but my team did a great job to get me ahead of it in the pits,” he added. “Still, fourth place was much better than the eighth I had at Spa after a drive-through, so it was a pretty good achievement, although picking up drive-throughs is not something I want to continue!

“I might have lost the championship lead here to Mattias Ekstrom, but I’m only three points behind, so the objective for the next race at Oschersleben is to turn it around again and regain my advantage.”