Augusto Farfus has bounced back after the difficult Russian round in Moscow: At the seventh race weekend of the 2015 DTM season in German Oschersleben, the driver from Curitiba is consistently among the very top drivers in his Shell BMW M4 DTM. In the first race of this weekend, today’s 40-minute sprint race, he crossed the line in fourth after a front-row start.
The BMW Team RBM driver set the fastest lap time in yesterday’s first free practice session. When coming to the track this morning, Farfus and his colleagues had to be patient. Heavy fog caused a delay of three hours before the action at the “Motorsport Arena Oschersleben” could finally start. The second free practice session was shortened to 25 minutes, with Farfus finishing in second place. In the 20-minute qualifying session at noon, he secured P2 on the front row of the grid next to his fellow BMW driver Timo Glock, who had claimed his first ever pole position in DTM.
As usual in Oschersleben, the first corner after the start was very hectic. Farfus dropped back to fourth, while behind him several cars collided. This mass crash caused a ten-minute safety car period until all the debris on the track was removed. After the re-start, there was only one lap of racing before the safety car was back on track again after a car lost its bonnet. Farfus held his fourth position to the finish line and took the chequered flag behind his fellow BMW drivers Glock, Bruno Spengler and António Félix da Costa. Being fourth, he completed the 1-2-3-4 for BMW.
“We had a very strong car for a single lap performance. I was the fastest yesterday and second fastest this morning and I qualified for the front row”, Farfus summed up. “Unfortunately our race pace was not strong enough. We could see that Timo and Bruno had a fantastic package; they did a really good job. Today maybe the podium would have possible with a better turn one. But that is racing.”
Overall, the BMW Team RBM driver is satisfied: “I am pretty happy with P4. It was a good recovery after a bad weekend in Moscow, so I am looking forward to the next races and the good thing about having two races on a weekend is that we can do better tomorrow.” His aim for tomorrow’s 60-minute race is clear: Farfus wants to step onto the podium, if possible on the top step: “Timo showed today that our package can win so that is what we want to do tomorrow.”
Qualifying for the 14th race of the season is tomorrow from 11:35 to 11.55 and the 60-minute race starts at 15.13 local time.
