The DTM championship held their third and fourth rounds at the Lausitzring in Germany this past weekend, May 25-26, 2024, where the Schubert Motorsport BMW team came away with sixth place finishes in both races as Audi and Porsche scored wins.
The first of two races was held on Saturday in wet conditions. The best BMW qualifier was Sheldon van der Linde in the #31 M4 GT3 in twelfth with a 1:21.163, while Marco Wittmann qualified fourteenth in the #11 BMW and René Rast qualified seventeenth in the #33. DTM is very close, and the top fourteen cars were within a half-second of each other in qualifying. Sheldon’s brother Kelvin was on the pole in an Audi.
Race one was impacted by thunderstorms and heavy rain, and Kelvin van der Linde stayed in front to win the race from pole in his Audi, while brother Sheldon also put in a strong race to move up from a starting position of twelfth to sixth by the end in the #31 BMW. Marco Wittmann ended up thirteenth and René Rast had a DNF after a technical issue with the car. “We struggled more than expected there,” said van der Linde. “In the races, our pace was great, and we were able to make up a lot of ground, but if we want to fight for the podium or victories, we simply have to start further ahead.”
In qualifying for race two on Sunday, Marco Wittmann was the fastest of the BMWs in ninth, while Rast qualified in thirteenth and van der Linde in eighteenth out of twenty cars. Race two didn’t go any better for the BMWs than race one, with Rast finishing in sixth, while van der Linde moved up ten spots to finish in eighth, followed by Wittmann in ninth. The race was won by championship leader Thomas Preining in a Porsche.
With four rounds complete, Sheldon van der Linde is the highest placed BMW driver in points in the drivers’ championship in seventh, while Schubert Motorsport is third in team points and BMW is fourth in manufacturer points behind Audi, Mercedes, and Lamborghini. “In the DTM, we experienced a difficult weekend,” said BMW M Motorsport Head of Customer Racing Björn Lellmann. “Especially in qualifying, we are not where we need to be if we want to have a say in the title fight. Nevertheless, we still scored well in the races, which was important. But we do not see ourselves in the midfield; our ambition is higher. Together with Schubert Motorsport, we will now prepare for Zandvoort and there launch a new attack on the top in the DTM.”
BMW teams did much better in the ADAC GT4 Germany support races at the Lausitzring, where Gabriele Piana and Michael Schrey drove their Hofer Racing by Bonk Motorsport #2 BMW M4 GT4 to their third win in three rounds on Saturday. Piana and Schrey then finished fourth in the second GT4 race on Sunday, with four more BMW M4 GT4s finishing in the top-ten.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy ADAC/Gruppe C Photography]