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“The double title is an absolute highlight of my career”

Scoring seventh at the 16th and penultimate round of the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland, René Rast secured the coveted title of Germany's fastest one-make race series for the second time since 2008. Six wins and a further six podium results earned him 242 points on his account. With this title victory, the German competing for the Deutsche Post by tolimit squad managed something that only one other race driver has ever succeeded in doing. Rast is the champion of both the Porsche Carrera Cup as well as the international Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup in the same year. In the over 20-year history of the Porsche brand trophy series, only Frank Stippler has achieved this feat in the 2003 season.

You achieved the double and are now the champion of the two most important Porsche makes cups in one year. How do you feel?
Rast: Great! To take home both championship titles in one year is of course the absolute highlight of my career. I was already Carrera Cup champion in 2008, and the champion of the Supercup over the last three years - but it's an incredibly great feeling to have clinched the extremely difficult double. You can't do any better than that in Porsche one-make racing.

If you look at your hat-trick in the Supercup it leads to the question: Is it more difficult to claim the title in the German brand trophy series?
Rast: It's not more difficult. The main reason is that I wasn't able to contest the full season in 2010 and 2011 because I had other commitments or started the season later. I only contested the full series in 2007 and 2008 and therefore had a real chance to fight for the title.

You started this season at the end of April with a victory but then a winless phase followed until the fifth race weekend on the Norisring in Nuremberg. What was the reason?
Rast: In Hockenheim I profited from the fact that my team mate Sean retired with tyre damage while leading. Otherwise I wouldn't have won there either. Early on in the season we had a problem with my car which we could only rectify in Nuremberg. We took a step in the right direction and I took off from there - on the Norisring with two pole positions and two victories. From that moment I was always up the front. So you can only really count my season from the Norisring on. And from then on it was perfect.

What characterised the 2012 Carrera Cup season?
Rast: There was a very good, very strong field with six drivers capable of winning. You had to fight all the time because the lap times were incredibly close. My main rivals were Nicki Thiim, Kévin Estre, Norbert Siedler and Jaap van Lagen. But ultimately it came down to Sean Edwards and me because we simply drove for a very good team.

Your Deutsche Post by tolimit team made its mark this season with eleven wins. What made the crew so strong?
Rast: We have an excellent engineer and very experienced mechanics. It was a great combination where everything fitted together perfectly. And not least we had three good drivers. Aside from me and Sean we had Klaus Bachler, even if the Porsche junior didn't have so much experience as a Carrera Cup newcomer. But Sean and I are on a similar level and that gave us extra motivation. We always compared data and exchanged information. In this way we learned a lot from each other.

Sean Edwards was not just your teammate but also your greatest rival for the title. We often saw you two in the paddock together and got the impression you had a lot of fun. Was that a tactic not to let your opponent out of sight?
Rast: No, we get on really well. When you drive in different teams the competition is more intense. But if you belong to the same team you obviously have a lot to do with each other. We stayed in the same hotel, had breakfast together, we travelled to the race track together. It may sound surprising, but Sean and I have become friends.

What do you like about him?
Rast: He is a typical Englishman, a funny guy. He can be nice but he has all the tricks. We are similar in this way. If one is playing the trick the other reacts immediately. So it's pretty balanced. Sean is good for a joke, he can dish it out, but he can take it too. There hasn't been any pressure between us, but instead the feeling that the best man wins. Our relationship over the year was very relaxed.

You are already known as a relaxed sort. Is this true or is this impression deceptive because it would be better if you perhaps hid your true feelings?
Rast: I think I was never as relaxed on the championship weekend as now in Hockenheim. When I was fighting for the Supercup hat-trick in August and September I was pretty nervous. And when I fought for my first Carrera Cup title in 2008 I was very tense. But before this Carrera Cup finale I was really relaxed, like I was going to my grandma's for lunch. Obviously it helped that I already had the Supercup title in the bag. I don't put myself under pressure anymore, everything just fits.

What makes the race driver René Rast so strong in the Porsche race car?
Rast: That's hard to answer. I have so much experience! And maybe I'm lucky that the characteristic of the rear-wheel-drive 911 simply suits me? As far as lap times are concerned the other drivers were right up there with me, you saw that here again in Hockenheim. No one is really better. It is all about keeping a cool head and driving a clean and faultless race to the finish. And I'm good at that.

What is your dream for your race career in the future?
Rast: My future is very definitely in sports car endurance racing. I contested a couple of races this year and loved it. My goal is to contest long distance races, my dream is to win them.

What do you do in your spare time? Computer racing maybe?
Rast: Actually I like to do that occasionally but not often. I really enjoy sport and I do a lot of it. I like to relax and sometimes go to a movie. Totally normal really. But I'm not at all interested in extreme sport. I would definitely not jump off the Eiffel Tower.