Marco Wittmann: “We still have plenty of work to do”

BMW Motorsport endured a difficult weekend at Lausitzring, where the Bavarian cars lacked pace, scoring poor results and losing ground to their rivals in the championship.

Marco Wittmann qualified in tenth place, gaining one position in the race. The reigning champion was satisfied with the result, but is aware the current pace won’t be enough to defend his title: “I am fairly pleased with the result. We did the best we could today. I had decent pace. However, the Audis were pretty much unassailable today. We still have plenty of work to do.”

Team RBM driver Maxime Martin was the best classified driver in the race in eighth position, with the Belgian not happy about the outcome of the weekend: “It was a difficult race. We have to work on our race pace and realise that qualifying alone is not the key to success.”

Tom Blomqvist had high hopes for the race after qualifying second on the front row of the grid, but a false start took away his hopes of a good result: “I was having problems with the clutch, which lead to a jump start as I moved. I was really disappointed when I heard that I was being penalised. I didn’t really attack after that, but I wouldn’t have had the pace for it. We need to find out why we are having problems with the race pace.”

BMW Motorsport lies third in the manufacturers’ standings with 64 points, 123 adrift from leaders Mercedes AMG. Motorsport Director Jens Marquardt acknowledges the team has a lot of work to do: “Sunday’s race was also a tough one for us here at the Lausitzring. Of course, finishing with our best-placed cars in eighth and ninth positions is not the result we were hoping for. Overall, we didn’t choose particularly aggressive tactics, unlike Audi for example. You could see that their tactics paid off twice. It really wasn’t a great weekend for us.”