Marco Wittmann won the Sunday DTM race at the Hungaroring near Budapest, leading an M4 DTM podium sweep ahead of Timo Glock and Philipp Eng. All six of the BMW racers on hand finished in the points; Joel Ericson was sixth, Bruno Spengler was seventh, and Augusto Farfus was eighth.
The Sunday race was interrupted by a red-flag period after several incidents on the wet and slippery pit road when racers began to make their stops. Mercedes racers Lucas Auer and Edoardo Mortara and BMW racer Bruno Spengler slid when they tried to stop; as a result, a pit marshal and several crew members were hit, and a gantry in Mortara’s pit was damaged.
All six BMW racers had pitted before the race was red-flagged. Wittmann, Eng, and Glock moved up when the race resumed, running behind a pack of five racers who had not yet mad their pit stops. The BMWs pounced as the front-runners pitted, with Wittmann taking the lead ahead of Glock and Eng (Glock had passed Eng several laps before the end).
Sunday’s performance for BMW marked a dramatic turnaround from Saturday, when the teams struggled with setup and all six BMWs had finished out of the points. Mercedes’ Paul Di Resta won the race.
Glock, who had come into the Hungaroring race with the series’ drivers’ points lead, left with the lead as well; Mercedes’ Gary Paffett was second. The next BMW racer in the standings was Marco Wittmann in fifth place. BMW Team RMR led team points and Mercedes led manufacturers’ points.
Rudolf Dittrich, the general manager BMW Motorsport Vehicle Development, said, “The race action is of secondary importance today. The most important thing is that the people involved in the incidents in the pit lane were not too seriously injured, and will hopefully be back fit and well soon. Bruno Spengler’s stop was a close thing; I am very happy that nothing serious happened to anyone at BMW Team RBM. From a sporting point of view, the weekend was an emotional roller coaster. We had a poor race on Saturday, but turned the result on its head today, thanks to our aggressive race strategy and the particular circumstances. Congratulations to Marco on his win, and to Timo and Philipp on their podiums. The way the race panned out obviously played into our hands, but we also saw that our speed was much better today than on Saturday.”
DTM racers run again at the Norisring in Germany in June.
Note: Spengler, Auer, and Mortara, who were involved in the pit lane incidents that brought out the red flag, were excluded from the results after the race. The exclusions moved Farfus up to seventh.
—Brian Morgan