BMW Motorsport surprised by strong season start

BMW Motorsport director Jens Marquardt admitted that the strong form shown yesterday came as a surprise, especially after the technical difficulties the team had during the pre-season testing.

Marco Wittmann claimed the championship lead after scoring both the pole position and victory in the first race of the season.

“When you have a substantially new package you don’t know what to expect so I’m extremely happy to start with a pole position and, then win is a great result and my big compliments go to Marco and Team RMG and all our guys,” Marquardt told TouringCarTimes.

“It has been a very tough few weeks and months and also the fact that all six BMWs made it to the end of the race it’s something I wouldn’t have expected, especially with the situation we had with Philipp (Eng), who had to face the race without having completed a single lap in the qualifying, so finishing the race is the minimum we could achieve,” added the BMW boss.

Part of the pre-season testing issues was limited time on track.

“We had very limited testing with this new car, some of our guys just got two days before the start of the season at the Lausitzring and, as you said, the first two days there weren’t the best,” said Marquardt.

“Philipp’s problem yesterday was a faulty engine sensor which caused the whole system to shut down. We couldn’t change it as it’s part of the engine, we worked a way around it, but we don’t know whether the sensor is faulty or whether it detected something special, and that’s something we still have to investigate.”

The conditions yesterday were difficult, with heavy rain and very cold temperatures. Marquardt admits that there is still room for trouble ahead: “This is still something I think we will see during the first half of the season with the new power train and package, as it’s extremely hard to figure out what the problem is and then sort it in time for the race, so we could see that there is still some work to be done.”

One of the biggest talking points of the new Class One regulations has been their effect on the tyres, with the working window and temperature being the main concerns yesterday. Marquardt admitted they are still exploring different possibilities: “So no, I didn’t expect it to be that way, with the difficult conditions yesterday and we could also see that, with regards to getting the tyres to work consistently there were differences in the field,” said Marquardt.

“Today our reference is the first free practice session from Friday which was dry, but the temperatures are very low, so the big question again will be getting the tyres to work, both for the qualifying session and the race.”