The 2016 DTM season has entered the finishing straight: at the Hungaroring near Budapest, the penultimate round of the year has got under way for Augusto Farfus and BMW Team MTEK. However, so far the weekend has not gone according to plan for Augusto and BMW. In Saturday’s sprint race, the driver from Curitiba had to settle for 20th in his Shell BMW M4 DTM. So far BMW has struggled to find pace on the newly surfaced Hungarian track.
The highest placed BMW driver was championship leader Marco Wittmann in seventh position, the rest of the BMW M4 DTMs made it to the finish outside the points positions. The first six positions went to Audi. Qualifying in the early afternoon gave a hint that it would be a difficult day for Augusto and BMW. Wittmann was the fastest BMW M4 DTM driver in qualifying, finishing tenth. Augusto started from 19th on the grid. After 40 minutes, he crossed the line in 20th. Despite the fact that the result is not what he hoped for, Augusto is pretty optimistic that tomorrow will be a better day.
“It is not a track which suits our car and we started so far back that it was not possible to aim for a good result,” was how he summed up the race. “I have to say that during the race the car was not feeling too bad, so I will not look at this race as that negative. Of course if you look at the results it is negative, but I think it helped us to learn some things. Now let us try to take the lesson learnt today and perform better tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a better day, this is what we are here for.”
The action at the Hungaroring will start with a free practice session from 10.45 to 11.15. Sunday’s qualifying will be held from 12.50 to 13.10 and the 60-minute race will start at 15.30.
