BMW seeking to get more from the tyres
BMW Motorsport concluded a complicated weekend at the Lausitzring, where only Team RMG’s Maxime Martin scored points in both races. The Belgian was eighth yesterday, in yet another unsatisfactory result for the team.
Martin’s seventh and eighth positions in the Lausitzring races are little compensation for the Bavarian manufacturer which, prior to the start of the season, had a record of winning seven of the nine titles available since their return to the DTM in 2012. The Belgian now amounts 16 points, being the highest placed BMW driver in the standings, but down in eight place.
Getting to grips with the tyres seems the sticking issue for BMW. 2015 has seen a return to a single compound, which is last year’s prime tyre, or the hardest one. From the season opener at Hockenheim, Jens Marquardt, Motorsport Director for the manufacturer, has singled out the tyres as the main problem for BMW this year. As it could be forecasted, Marquardt was far from happy yesterday: “As expected, that was a tough race for us today. Maxime Martin was again the only BMW driver in the points, in eighth place this time. That is obviously unsatisfactory. After the safety car phase you could see that we took two or three laps to get the tyres working. We did not manage to get the maximum performance out of the tyres over the entire distance. This is not at all what we saw during the initial winter tests. We will have to investigate the reasons for this.”
Maxime Martin was again the leading man for BMW on the track, but with a lot of problems due to tyre wear. Being the best driver for his team was little consolation: “The race was virtually a carbon copy of Saturday’s. I had bigger problems than the others with tyre degradation. That was particularly a problem at the restart after the safety car phase. On the whole, this was a disappointing weekend from a BMW point of view. The fact that I was the best BMW driver in both races is the only positive I can take from the weekend.”
Bruno Spengler initially crossed the line in tenth position, but was handed a drive through penalty for his incident with Audi’s Adrien Tambay. The Canadian chose to be philosophical about the outcome of the race: “The race actually went well and I was happy with our pace. The safety car period gave me the chance to close on Adrien Tambay. He collided with Nico Müller and I saw a gap. However, once I got into that gap the wheel locked slightly and I made contact with him. He spun – and I was penalised. Otherwise I would have been tenth.”
After the second round of the 2015 DTM season, BMW lies a distant third and last in the manufacturers’ standings, with just 48 points. Next for the team is their home race in Norisring, from the 26th to the 28th of June.
