BMW Motorsport has announced the 2016 driver pairings and team assignments for DTM. BMW had already announced that it would retain the same eight drivers and the same four teams. But it has always shuffled team assignments of its drivers.
Only at BMW Team Schnitzer do both drivers return; António Félix da Costa and Martin Tomczyk will continue there. Timo Glock switches from Team MTEK to Team RMG, where he will be paired with Marco Wittmann. The two racers were teammates at Team MTEK in 2013. Augusto Farfus, who has run with BMW Team RBM in DTM for four years and had run with the team in the World Touring Car Championship before that, replaces Glock at Team MTEK, where his teammate will be Bruno Spengler. Maxime Martin replaces Farfus at Team RBM, where he joins Tom Blomqvist.
In summary, the 2016 lineup is:
BMW Team RMG: Marco Wittmann, Timo Glock
BMW Team MTEK: Bruno Spengler, Augusto Farfus
BMW Team RBM: Tom Blomqvist Maxime Martin
BMW Team Schnitzer: António Félix da Costa, Martin Tomczyk
BMW motorsport director Jens Marquardt says, “We have a very strong and stable squad of drivers, which showed outstanding team spirit in the battle for the Manufacturers’ title last season. Therefore, we had no need to change our squad. However, it has always been our philosophy to create new impulses by systematically varying the line-ups within our four DTM teams, and thus to get the absolute maximum out of our overall package. We have had very good experiences in this regard. Because of this, we are confident that we will achieve success again with the changes for the coming season. Augusto Farfus, Timo Glock and Maxime Martin have proven that they are among the best in the DTM and that they are capable of winning races. They now face new challenges, which will hopefully help them take another step forward in their development.”
The 2016 DTM season begins at Hockenheim on May 6-8.—Brian S. Morgan
