The DTM series hit the midway point of the season this past weekend at the Norisring street circuit in Germany, which turned out to be a disappointing race weekend for both BMW entries.
In race one, neither of the BMW entries from Schubert Motorsport qualified all that well, with René Rast the fastest in seventeenth position in the #33 M4 GT3 EVO and Marco Wittmann right behind Rast in eighteenth in the #11 M4 GT3 EVO. Rast managed to gain a few positions in the race to finish in the points in tenth, while Wittmann finished where he started in eighteenth. The race was won by Jordan Pepper in a Lamborghini. “We didn’t have the speed we needed to compete at the front,” said Rast. “We’ll take the points and haven’t lost too much ground in the standings. It was damage limitation.”
Things went worse for Wittmann in race two. Wittmann, who counts the Norisring as his home race and had a lot of friends and fans in attendance, was taken out at the start of the race after making contact with other cars – a situation he couldn’t avoid. “A very disappointing weekend for me,” he said. “We struggled from the start and never had the pace to aim for a top ten or top five result. Then, to be pushed into the wall in the first corner of my home race on Sunday is disheartening. There was nothing I could do in that situation. The only positive was the fantastic fans, who once again made the Norisring event unique.”
Marco Wittmann (green car) gets the squeeze in race two.
Rast scored some points in the second race, finishing seventh after starting in eleventh. The second race was won by Porsche driver Thomas Preining. “These were tough races for us,” said Schubert Motorsport Team Principal Torsten Schubert. “It was clear that other manufacturers were significantly faster than us at the Norisring. On Sunday, we managed to move René forward with a good strategy and strong pit stops, extracting the maximum. It’s a real shame for Marco that he was pushed into the wall through no fault of his own in the very first corner of his home race on Sunday. We are now fully focused on being more competitive at the Nürburgring.”
With four race weekends and eight races to go (DTM has two races per weekend), Rast is sixth in driver points and Wittmann is ninth. Mercedes-AMG driver Lucas Auer is leading the championship. Schubert Motorsport is third in team points, and BMW is fifth in manufacturer points. The next DTM race weekend is at the Nürburgring on August 8th-10th.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy Gruppe C Photography]
