Kristensen exhausted after return

The Dane was injured in a crash in the first DTM race of the season at Hockenheim, and his return to racing was confirmed less than one week before the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Kristensen said that he felt fine when he returned to competitive action at Le Mans, but after making his DTM return one week later at the Norisring he said he was feeling the effects of his time away.

"I'm pretty exhausted now, to be honest," Kristensen told autosport.com. "But you can't lay down for nine weeks and expect to come back as normal.

"Having Le Mans as a warm-up race before Norisring was  not helping my condition, and physically I was struggling a bit towards the end of the DTM race."

Kristensen finished fifth in Germany at the weekend, and he is now looking forward to making the most of the three-week gap before the next race at Mugello.

"Now I have three weeks to the next race so I will be in better shape there," he said. "It was not a bad comeback, and I will be in better shape for Mugello and I will profit from this experience."

Kristensen also admitted that he has had to concentrate more in the cockpit due to his fitness levels.

"When you get down to the last tenth of a second, I don't know if I can say I'm as quick as ever," he said.

"But I concentrate more which is not natural for me, so I use more energy. I think at my age I can be quite happy with my return."