Jonathan Aberdein: “We must close the gap to Audi”

BMW Motorsport has work to do in order to be able to compete head-to-head with rivals in the DTM Audi Sport, according to Team RMR’s Jonathan Aberdein.

Aberdein took a sixth place finish in the opening race at Assen, which marked the best result for the Bavarian manufacturer.

Audi again dominated the qualifying session, with Aberdein’s team-mate Lucas Auer the best-placed BMW driver on the grid in seventh place.

The South African racer started from ninth and had a tidy start, managing to keep up with the pack and staying out of trouble when Team RMG’s Marco Wittmann spun on the track on lap five.

Aberdein changed tyres on lap 15, progressively gaining ground in the following laps. Team Rosberg’s René Rast was rapidly losing ground due to his tyres completely dropping, but the gap was too big for Aberdein to recover, with the South African finishing in sixth place.

“In sixth place I was the best BMW driver, and it was my best result of the year,” said Aberdein after the race. “But we can’t really be pleased with the result, particularly with our deficit to Audi.”

“We need to put our heads together and work hard on closing the gap,” concluded Aberdein.

Fellow BMW driver Sheldon van der Linde agreed with his countryman.

“We are currently losing about 26 seconds to Audi on race pace,” he said. “We can play with the strategy and nurse the tyres, but we still need to improve our overall pace.

“In terms of engine power we are more or less ok, but we have to improve the balance of the car.”

“Qualifying is very important,” said Team RMG’s Timo Glock. “We can try many things, but if we qualify from seventh downwards, we just end up in a trail of cars.”

BMW Motorsport Vehicle Development Rudolf Dittich believes that BMW might have been too conservative on Saturday: “We were unable to build on our sporting performance from the Lausitzring. Even in qualifying we didn’t have the pace we expected.

“Then, in the race we were very careful with the tyres to start with after the experiences in the free practice sessions. Now we need to analyse whether we might have been too cautious.”

Glock is the best-placed BMW driver in the championship in fifth position with 54 points. In the manufacturers’ table, Audi leads with 482 points, with BMW counting only 203.