Marco Wittmann: “I raced my a** off”

BMW Team RMG driver Marco Wittmann achieved an unexpected result with second place on Sunday at Assen, especially since he hit serious turbo troubles in qualifying.

Wittmann was unable to set a competitive lap in the qualifying session as a turbo failure left him with no power, starting the race from the pit lane.

The Team RMG driver, however, started the race with a strong pace, recovering quickly through the pack.

“I think I raced my a** off, to be honest,” said Wittmann. “I had such a good pace in the race, found myself in the early stages already in P8 or P7, but in the early stages was a bit difficult to pass the Audis, specially the WRT where I was stuck behind, so I decided to stop a bit earlier to undercut them, which worked, but I knew I had to go long with the second set.”

Wittmann pitted at the end of lap 13, managing to undercut his competitors. When they had completed their pit stops, the 29-year-old found himself just one second behind Audi’s René Rast, the then virtual leader of the race.

But the tyre degradation became obvious on lap 25, as Wittmann was losing ground to eventual winner Mike Rockenfeller: “It was very tough, I had a lot of vibrations in the car and it felt like a tyre would go off the wheels, and I wasn’t sure to be able to make the race to the finish so, in the end, to make it into P2, it’s unbelievable, quite unexpected.

“At the end there was like 20 minutes to go and I thought I would never make it to the end, and I even asked my team to consider a second stop, but at the end it was incredible!”

At the chequered flag, Wittmann was second, turning around his fortunes from the qualifying and also recovering ground in the championship. After this race, the Team RMG driver is third in the standings, 40 points behind Rast.

“Tyre management was the decisive factor,” said general manager for Vehicle Development in Motorsport at BMW Rudolf Dittrich. “Towards the end, virtually all drivers were struggling and some had to make a second pit stop.”

“Without a doubt, Marco Wittmann was the man of the race. He finished second after starting from 18th on the grid. In the closing stages, he was just concentrating on getting the car home and defending his position on his well-worn tyres,” added Dittrich.