The 2011 season opened in dramatic fashion on the Yas Marina circuit, as the No. 7 Young Driver Aston Martin DB9 of Tomas Enge and Alex Muller missed its braking point on the run down to the first corner - causing an accident that not only led to the car's retirement from the Qualifying Race, but threatened its participation in the Championship Race ...
With the team facing a daunting repair job, Enge and Muller traded their race overalls for a slightly greasier ensemble as they settled in alongside the team mechanics in a scamble to ready the DB9 for the evening's hour-long race.
With drivers and team making a gargantuan effort, the car not only made it onto the Championship Race grid but excelled in the race, as Muller and Enge came through the field to finish a remarkable fourth - putting the duo seventh in the Drivers' standings, and third in the Teams'.
Alex Müller: "There was no time to be wasted and we are a team; we all wanted to be in the Championship Race so we all worked together. Sometimes it is not easy to try to help because the mechanics know what needs to be done and the way they have to do the job but we asked and they gave us work.
"I am a mechanic anyway and I did my apprenticeship at Porsche so I knew I could help if they told me what to do. I took the broken front splitter apart together with my race engineer Claude Roth, we put the new front splitter together and saved some time for the mechanics who had to do so much work!"
Tomas Enge: "I felt guilty (after missing his braking point) and I wanted to help. We didn't have much time, but we all wanted it so I asked what I could do. I was told to clean the floor of the car because it was covered in oil, I changed bolts and got more little tasks by the engineers and mechanics and in the end we were able to make the race because we all worked together as a team."
Erhard Fischer (Team Manager): "I was really surprised to see the car running just before the start of the race because it didn't look promising with such a short period to repair the damage. It was a great team effort and we are very pleased with the result of the Championship Race."
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