A heavy two-minute rain shower mixed up everything in today’s DTM race at the Hungaroring at Budapest. A major amount of luck with pitstop timing decided the final race positions. Augusto Farfus crossed the line in eighth in his Shell BMW M4 DTM. His BMW Team RMG team-mates Marco Wittmann and Timo Glock were first and second, while Philipp Eng completed a BMW podium lock-out – they had all had started from towards the back of the field and benefitted from stopping and changing tyres at the right time.
In the morning qualifying, Augusto was the second best BMW driver behind Glock (eighth) in 12th position. He and his team opted for an early pit stop after the second lap but then it started to rain and Augusto had to pit again after lap four to switch to rain tyres. Shortly after that the race was red-flagged after the heavy rain had caused incidents in the slippery pit lane. The race resumed in dry conditions for 28 minutes plus one lap. After his two pit stops, Augusto was in 13th position at the restart and moved forward through the field up to eighth at the chequered flag.
“One lap cost us the race. If I had pitted a lap later it would have been a different outcome,” commented Augusto. “Actually I saw the rain coming but over the weekend we had the situation several times when the rain did not wet the track enough so we decided to come to the pits and it was the wrong call. With those decisions you can be right or wrong and unfortunately it did not pay off. I think that today we definitely had a better car so let’s take the positives. The most important thing today is that those injured in the pit lane incidents will recover very soon, I wish them all the best.”
The 2018 DTM season will resume in three weeks’ time at Germany’s Norisring (23rd/24th June). Before that, the undisputed highlight of the year awaits Augusto: the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours on 16th and 17th June. The driver from Curitiba will contest the most famous endurance race of the world in a new BMW M8 GTE entered by BMW Team MTEK.
