Marco Wittmann in the #11 M4 DTM finished third at the Nürburgring on Saturday, September 12 behind a pair of Audis driven by race winner Nico Müller and second-place finisher René Rast. Philipp Eng in sixth, Timo Glock in seventh, Sheldon van der Linde in eighth, and Jonathan Aberdein in tenth also scored points for BMW. On Sunday, Audi locked out the top five positions with Robin Frijns taking the win. The best placing BMW finisher was van der Linde in sixth; Aberdein, Wittmann, and Eng finishing eighth through tenth.
BMW motorsport director Jens Marquardt said, “That was a tough race after a difficult qualifying session…We don’t want to be battling for fifth to tenth places, we want to be fighting for a podium, and to do that we really have to close the gap in qualifying. All the BMW drivers were close together but the gap to Audi was larger than it was on Saturday. We have to understand the reason for that. It is the grid position that determines how you get going in the race. The race pace is pretty good, but the lap speed is not. We will have to take a look at that. Congratulations to Robin Frijns on the win.”
Ahead of another weekend for DTM at the Ring on September 19–20, van der Linde in sixth is the top-ranking BMW racer in drivers’ points.—Brian Morgan
[Photo courtesy BMW Motorsport.]
