BMW announces DTM driver pairings for 2016

BMW Motorsport will face their fifth season in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters with a reshuffled line up. Only Team Schnitzer will retain the same drivers from last season.

Back in December, the Bavarian manufacturer announced that they would keep all eight drivers from 2015 for the second season in a row, with Motorsport Director Jens Marquardt highlighting consistency as key for BMW’s victory in the Manufacturers’ championship.

BMW has now made public their driver pairings for the forthcoming 2016 season, which is due to start the 7-8 of May in Hockenheim. There will be some adjustments, with Team Schnitzer keeping their 2015 line up unchanged.

Marquardt explained: “We have a very strong and stable squad of drivers, which showed outstanding team spirit in the battle for the Manufacturers’ title last season, so we had no need to change our squad. However, it has always been our philosophy to create new impulses by systematically varying the line-ups within our four DTM teams, and thus to get the absolute maximum out of our overall package. We have had very good experiences in this regard. Because of this, we are confident that we will achieve success again with the changes for the coming season.”

Timo Glock, Augusto Farfus and Maxime Martin will change teams for the first time in their respective DTM careers, in a bid to strengthen BMW’s structure and maximize the potential of each squad. Another novelty is that Marco Wittmann will choose the number on his M4 DTM for the first time, as he was the reigning champion last year, when the option to choose permanent race numbers was introduced. The German driver from Team RMG will compete with #11.

BMW Motorsport teams and pairings for the 2016 DTM season

Team RMG:
#11 Marco Wittmann
#16 Timo Glock

Team MTEK:
#7 Bruno Spengler
#18 Augusto Farfus

Team RBM:
#31 Tom Blomqvist
#36 Maxime Martin

Team Schnitzer:
#13 António Félix da Costa
#77 Martin Tomczyk