Original subtitles

Morning. Morning.

How's it going? You good? Good, you?

Yeah, not bad.

I always had this passion of eventually setting up kind of my own racing team.

We decided to create the Sapper .com racing.

At the moment, of course, you're re -driving in the GT3 cars.

Yeah, especially after all the right -handers, when you get that chicane.

But it's much better like this. There's so much more confidence on the braking,

on the entry to the corner. It's much more stable.

What I also enjoy is to see young talent coming through.

So that's why to try and create your own team and seeing that growth of drivers

also coming through is something that I enjoy.

Max, you are a three -time world champion. That's absolutely

Very lovely.

People sometimes ask me, what do you do in your free time? And they expect you

to be something completely different to anyone else. But I also just enjoy the

normal stuff.

He will do everything to win.

You see the competitiveness coming out for sure. Hey, you should shut up.

I think my life off track is very normal.

You know what I would like right now? Kebab.

You know, very simple, how it should be.

I mean, we're only 55 minutes late.

Fortunately, Max is the master.

He's insane.

Nice and simple.

We were

thinking about

something what Max was doing for a long time in several topics it was Tim

Racing, he was very engaged in GT3.

And Jos was doing rally.

And we thought to bring everything under one umbrella, in one look and feel,

where Max is basically overviewing all three pillars, with the passion what he

has for racing in general.

My main focus, of course, is still on F1. I can't dedicate my own time fully

it.

I mean, it's something that I grew up with in the back of my mind.

One day, you know, when, let's say, F1 is enough, you don't want to continue

driving anymore, you want to run your own team.

Eventually, I would like to have Stappen .com Racing as a team.

At the moment, we are at a team with our drivers, with our own libraries and

sponsors, but the target is to just have fully your own team.

My son is driving in the GTM this year, and we have to learn a lot in GT because

it's a different ballgame than Formula 1.

I think it's the toughest GT3 category out there at the moment. All the good

drivers are in it, and to come in as a kind of a rookie with not much

is tough.

But it's a good learning school.

Of course, there's moments where he's maybe not so happy with a certain

performance, but he will be also the first one to say how I can do better. So

it's not just pointing fingers. It's always pushing me forward to improve and

learn from my mistakes.

I'm there to coach him. I'm there to help him. He sees the data.

He sees what I'm doing differently to him, and it's all about processing and

learning.

The car that we're driving with at the moment is still very new, so it's normal

that you are still learning and finding a lot of things.

I jumped in the car myself, so I wanted to feel what was going on.

Of

course,

it's a new car for him, so just talking about the button, how everything works,

every car is a little bit different.

With the handle that's here.

If you're in the pit lane and you hit the brake hard, and the button on the

of the steering wheel presses, then this goes from white to green.

And now... Ah,

here. Yes.

You don't have to press it. Just click once. So now it's activated because it's

green.

And then you immediately start when we're in the air.

Then you just have a drop start and then you can just drive away without

pressing anything. Without anything? Yes. And when I come back in?

I

think

he feels the limitation of the car in the

second lap.

He's steering the car with his body. He feels everything.

He knows exactly what the car is missing to go faster.

Fortunately, Max is the master.

He's a three -time world champion, so if he said, you have to do this and this,

then he's listening.

The second round or something, the first time I really didn't put it on, I

almost spun it off.

On my fastest round, it went straight up.

And I didn't go in, I went all the way down.

I just didn't get the round together, because theoretically I have seven.

You got it fast in the second sector.

I had a hard time because of those two cells, I just couldn't... Yeah, but you

just didn't feel it there.

But yeah, that's good.

I think if you have a little bit of confidence that you can get behind the

so much.

It's

still

warm.

We don't want to make Max too difficult.

I think he just woke up.

Can you see him?

I have to... No,

a quarter over.

Quarter past nine, huh? Yeah. It's Max.

Where is he?

Well... Oh, he's at 9 .45.

Breakfast 9 .45, first thing 10 .15.

Oh, 10 .15.

Okay.

I looked at the schedule, it says 9 .45.

Arrival. Yeah, but it says like 9 .45 to like 10 .05 arrival.

Breakfast 9 .45 and first thing 10 .15.

It's time to qualify in Monaco. The streets here in Monte Carlo.

Well,

Max, enjoy your day.

So welcome everybody to Osher Sleben as we get set for our first qualifying

session of the new DTM season 2023.

When I watch my friends racing, I'm probably more nervous than I ever am in

car myself Once you're in control, you know what you're doing but then someone

else is controlling their job, right, their driving.

Nobody has put in a bank a lap at the moment. They've all done their system

checks, their installation lap. They're back into the pits. There's just two

cars out on the track at the moment.

The stopwatch for Thierry is the same as the stopwatch for the rest.

On the end, you are competing with the rest of the field, and Thierry has to

prove his speed.

And, of course...

With Verstappen .com and Red Bull on the car, we want to compete in the front.

So he knows what the outlines are. To be part of this program, he has to

perform.

On the end, we want to be competitive.

I told my son, I'm happy to support you, but we have to compete in the front.

I didn't feel super confident.

Just struggled a lot.

Then you start, as a driver, to push even more, try things which are just not

possible, you know. You try to bring more speed into the corner and then it's

only getting worse.

I remember just... Talking to yourself like, what the fuck are you doing, you

know?

The

lap

he did at 34, he should have slowed it down instead of then continue pushing.

You look at the screens and you are just in the bottom half.

It's just frustrating because you put so much effort into it. You try to prepare

yourself so much and you have moments where it's going really well.

And then from one moment to the other moment, it's not working anymore.

He did a bit of go -karting here and there, like very little, not much at

I think step by step, he started to pick up a little bit the virus of the racing

as well. So at one point we were like, well, why don't we give him...

a go in a in a gt4 car see how it goes we did those track days and you could

like with no basically racing experience that he picked it up quite naturally i

would say he did a drifting course in germany and he was facetiming me when he

was doing his lap half an hour later i got the first picture

that he was crashed

So, yeah, it goes with crashes.

He's racing against guys who grew up with me, who have a lot of racing

experience. So it's not easy to immediately, you know, be in the fight

them, know exactly what to do.

But it's good.

It's the hard way.

In things you cannot really train, that just comes naturally.

It's just that those racing scenarios and just progressing through a race

weekend, knowing when to push, when to be on the limit or not.

But again, that I also didn't learn in one or two years. It's just every year

you just get a bit better at it.

I'm curious to see how you're going to play.

Look who's behind us.

This is the director.

This is Max.

Well,

let's see who's going to win.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Not very fast.

This is a really nice shoe, by the way.

When did you get this one?

I wonder if my dad finds it.

Cherie is of course the son of my manager first of all, but I know him

was basically born.

We kind of, you know, like grew up together.

My first real memory with Max was probably when I was about six and I had

remote control from the one car.

And he will for sure remember this story.

We were playing with the car. He was like, can I give it a try?

So I gave the remote control to him. And about five seconds later, the car ended

up in the water.

That was my birthday present gone.

I need to still ask him if he can get me a new one.

During pedal, you see more his

competitive side. At the end, you know, he wants to win.

he will do everything to win, so he wants to have the best racket, he wants

have the best technique playing, he wants to feel ready, so he will make

that he's fully prepared.

For me it was also funny seeing kind of that side in him in a French fit,

because I mean during pedal it's still pretty relaxed, but you see the

competitiveness coming out for sure.

you shouldn't start a business with friends or whatever.

But it also depends. I mean, if I believe and I see that, you know,

qualified, then why can you not be friends?

Everyone has to do their job to the best. So at the end of the day, the

performance, of course, comes over friendship. But everyone knows that that

should be, I think, the standard anyway when you set up a team that it's not

there just, you know, to have an easygoing time. And I'm there to win.

I'm not there to just fill up the field.

I love it.

Even when you play shit, it's still fun.

I mean, it's all about trying to get better.

You have to brake the throttle a little bit. Even if you have a turbo lag, you

have to keep the throttle up.

We try that, but sometimes we get a gearbox that gets too hot.

Well, then it just gets too hot for me.

Not too hot,

but just like that. You miss a bit of momentum.

It's always good to come to a test day where there's no pressure, there's no

around. You can just focus on your own things and also try a lot of different

things to really know what direction to go to.

It's on the curb. The car on the front doesn't seem to absorb the curb very

nice. The car was very oversteering, which I normally don't mind, but it was

much.

I want to try to get to an understeer balance. Every corner, I'm just fighting

the rear.

Yeah, it just feels a bit light on the rear. The more you can find there.

When he was speaking, it was getting straight on the point.

And also for the magnitude of the issue, it was clear how much I had to do.

Because, of course, being an F1, they listen to you a little bit more.

It's normal.

Cherie is a bit more of a rookie.

And, of course, the engineers are also quite stubborn. That's how they are.

I think he was already complaining a bit, like, ah, the car's a bit on the

opposite side. It's not, you know, very stable on the rear. But they were like,

yeah.

Do we trust his feedback fully or not?

And then I jumped in the car and I said the same thing to what Cherie said.

That's also very important for them to know that what I say is the same as

Cherie's, that they can trust his feedback.

I had a lot of interaction with different drivers in the past, also

important drivers, but no one, let's say, at the level of Mark.

You know, everyone can do a fast lap.

It's probably the least hardest thing, but it's also understanding why you did

power slap or understand where can I improve more.

Just work for it. Like, you know, work hard, understand the mechanical side of

the cars as well.

The whole package that needs to come together.

And that's what I try to explain step by step.

I think also, what I feel this car... I think it's commitment and it's

precision. Always looking to the details, which I try to do the best

But I think with the experience he has, he's really good at that and always

thinking in advance.

He's very quick with the thought process.

Thank you. Thank you a bit, Bob.

I don't know.

I'm really curious.

Look at how tall she is now.

They're up to it. They gave us to it. Oh, fucking hell. Green, mate.

Let's see him go directly up to speed.

Everyone at one point can put in quite a quick lap, but for him it just comes so

quick. Even if it's a new car, he can just drive around the problems and use

talent and his experience to directly be on the pace.

I know what to expect from this kind of guy.

In this case was something really unexpected in a way that he was

lap time at a level which normally is not existing in the real life. So you

surprised even if you expect.

So, yes, then you remember it's something to say with your friends when

in the future in the bar.

You could just see the eyes lit up from end of day one to day two, and you could

see the confidence, the behavior.

For them, it was like when we did the lap time, they were like, wow, you know,

the car is quick. We made it quick.

It really feels a lot quicker. It feels like a different car.

So again, it's like a whole boost to the team at the end of the day. So they all

went to the next race.

I think full of confidence that yes, now we have a car that we can fight up

front.

So it was great to be in Mugello because over the two days I gained a lot of

confidence back.

I think also with the team, they started to trust me a bit more, maybe with

certain set -up feedback.

So it just kind of makes you forget the bad moments before and like a fresh

start for the next weekend.

Looks so good, like the way it moves.

Unbelievable, guys.

You deserve that. What an unbelievable season we're having.

Unbelievable. Large and in charge.

How does it fly, first of all?

Yes, thank you.

It's good.

And you?

Yes, it was difficult with those two sets.

Yes, after three pushes. But that's the track. That track always takes a little

longer for the tires to come.

Yes, because it's very soft. Yes, that track is very fine, of course.

Yes, and it doesn't really slide.

But yes, that's what it is.

Yes, that's better. I think the temperature is lower and that's why it

less quickly.

Is it colder now than Friday?

Yes, it's a lot colder.

There's something to learn for the next time.

I'll tell you that.

Now you can't change anything.

Okay, Bink.

I'm curious. We're trying to follow in the plane.

Hopefully it's too weak and we'll be okay.

That's good. I'll let you know what to do next. Hopefully it will be a good

trip.

Yes. That's good. Greetings there.

I'm a boy.

That's good.

Any more tips, dad?

What does he say?

Any more tips?

Yes.

Let's have him and one on the gas. And take a little more speed with you.

A little more speed with you.

That's good.

from gt4 into porsche cup to now into gt3 he has a tough learning school but

he's around he's there so i see the potential is there i think in one or two

years you know like he can pick up so much more experience and then you become

More all -rounder driver.

Okay.

Easy.

I'm pretty confident that he can really fight for, you know, race wins and who

knows.

Championship.