It is a happy Augusto Farfus who leaves the Dutch Circuit Park Zandvoort tonight. After he had described yesterday’s fourth place as “unfinished business”, the driver from Curitiba can say “Mission completed” today. Farfus finished second on the podium in today’s 60-minute race, the eighth race of the 2015 DTM season. It was again a brilliant success for BMW Motorsport: After yesterday’s 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 today five BMW M4 DTM cars finished in the first five positions. Young Portuguese driver António Félix da Costa claimed his first ever DTM victory. He and Farfus were joined on the podium by Bruno Spengler in third.
Pole position and P4 in yesterday’s sprint race gave enormous momentum to Farfus and BMW Team RBM. In today’s qualifying, Farfus secured third on the grid in his Shell BMW M4 DTM behind pole-setter Félix da Costa and Spengler. “We have different conditions to yesterday. It is overcast, the temperature as changed, but the car is good and I am optimistic that I can have a good race,” he commented after qualifying.
This time the positions remained unchanged at the start. Youngster Félix da Costa sprinted away from pole, followed by Spengler and Farfus. After 14 laps, the Brazilian completed his mandatory pit stop. With his strategy he overtook Spengler, and had improved to second after the pit stops. For the rest of the race Farfus was close behind leader Félix da Costa, but opted not to take unnecessary risks. After 60 minutes he crossed the line in his Shell BMW M4 DTM in second, and celebrated his first podium of the season. “I was faster than him, but here it is impossible to overtake,” Farfus reported. “Even with DRS there is no chance to overtake without taking a risk. Our focus was to collect many points and to improve our championship position. I had to wait for him to make a mistake, but he did not make any. And in the end it is the strong result for BMW that counts. Congratulations to Antonio for his first win. He really deserved it.”
“It was definitely a good race. Starting from P3 we had a really strong car, especially in the second part of the race,” Farfus enthused. “So I am very pleased. Yesterday we were not able to bring home the result we wanted, but today we are back on the podium. Slowly we are starting to put the puzzle together, making small steps, and Austria is also a potentially good circuit for us so we have all reason to look forward to it. We are highly motivated, I am very happy to be back on the podium and it was fantastic again for BMW to finish P1 to P5. That was an impressive job and shows to everyone how strong our family is.”
In the Drivers’ Championship, Farfus improved to 11th with 35 points. The next DTM round will be held on the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg in Austria from 31st July to 2nd August. In the meantime another great event awaits Farfus: On 25th/26th July he will tackle the iconic Belgian endurance classic “24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps” with the BMW Z4 GT3 of BMW Sports Trophy Team Marc VDS.
