Augusto Farfus endured a difficult Saturday at the Nürburgring. Having finished tenth in the first free practice session at the iconic circuit in the Eifel region of Germany, the BMW Team MTEK driver was confident he could finish in the points with his Shell BMW M4 DTM. However, luck deserted him in both qualifying and the 40-minute opening race.
Farfus struggled in qualifying. “I did not manage to put together a good lap in qualifying. It was tough with all the traffic out on the track,” he said. In the end, the Brazilian had to settle for 24th place on the grid. He was able to make little progress in the race itself and, to cap it all off, was then hit by Adrien Tambay. The contact threw Farfus into a spin, but he was able to continue. Ultimately, however, he was unable to do any better than 22nd. “It was a difficult start to the Nürburgring weekend for me,” he said, summing up Saturday’s action.
While luck was not on Farfus’ side, it was a different story for his fellow BMW Motorsport drivers. BMW Team RMG’s Marco Wittmann claimed his third win of the season, while Tom Blomqvist, Farfus’ team-mate from last year, came home second to complete a one-two for BMW.
“Congratulations to Marco and Tom. They did a superb job,” said Farfus. “They thoroughly deserved the win and second place. The fact that BMW claimed a one-two is the good news to come out of today. Marco and Tom showed that the BMW M4 DTM is competitive here. We must now look into why we were unable to explore that potential. I hope we find an answer, so that we can go on the attack again tomorrow.”
Farfus is now focussing fully on tomorrow’s 14th race of the 2016 DTM season. The action at the Nürburgring kicks off with free practice from 10:40 to 11:10. Sunday’s qualifying takes place from 12:50 to 13:10. The 60-minute race two begins at 15:13.
