The first of the two road races at Nürnberg’s Norisring ended in disappointment for Augusto Farfus. An extremely tight qualifying saw the Brazilian clock a personal best of 47.883 seconds. Although that put him just 0.411 seconds behind the fastest lap time, it was only sufficient for 16th on the grid.
Farfus, at the wheel of the Shell BMW M4 DTM, was able to work his way towards the front of the field in an eventful opening phase of the race on a wet track. He was actually running in the points when he was forced to retire with a technical issue after 11 laps. “It is a great shame that we were unable to implement our strategy. I was running fifth when I had to give up,” said Farfus. “I am obviously very disappointed. However, it was a great race for the other guys.”
Farfus’ BMW colleagues had many reasons to celebrate at the Norisring. Bruno Spengler claimed the first win of the DTM season for BMW. The Canadian’s victory was not only a special moment for him, but was also an historic one for BMW. The last BMW driver to win at the street circuit in Nürnberg was Steve Soper in a BMW M3 back in 1992. This latest success also marked BMW’s 25th victory since returning to the DTM in 2012. Maxime Martin finished second to complete the 20th one-two for BMW in the DTM. He had started the race from pole position. Marco Wittmann, Timo Glock and Tom Blomqvist came home fourth, fifth and sixth to round off an outstanding team result for BMW.
Farfus has another opportunity to achieve a good result on Sunday. His fellow BMW drivers proved emphatically in Saturday’s race that the BMW M4 DTM has the potential to do just that.
