BMW’s DTM teams and drivers ran at home in an exhibition event at the Munich Olympic Stadium on Saturday and Sunday July 14 and 15.
Joey Hand and Dirk Werner finished fourth in Saturday’s relay races while Bruno Spengler finished third in Sunday’s individual competition.
Cars ran head to head on two side-by-side circuits set up in the stadium. On Saturday, teammates ran against each other first to determine pairings for the top four drivers. The top four BMW drivers then ran against pairings from Mercedes and Audi. Spengler was quickest, with Hand second, Werner third, Augusto Farfus fourth, Martin Tomczyk fifth, and Andy Priaulx sixth. Spengler and Farfus were paired for the relays, as were Hand and Werner, while Tomczyk and Priaulx sat out the rest of the day’s competition.
Drivers were to hand off to their teammate after three laps of competition. Because of radio problems Farfus missed the handoff, so he and Spengler were eliminated. This meant that Hand and Werner automatically advanced to the semi-finals; they did not push, and lost to Mercedes’ Gary Paffett and Christian Vietoris.
In the semis, when teams handed off after four laps, Hand and Werner lost by just .871 seconds to Audi’s Adrien Tambay and Timo Schneider. They came up against Paffett and Vietoris again in a runoff for third, but finished .721 seconds behind the Mercedes duo. Ralf Schumacher and Jamie Green won the relay for Mercedes.
All six BMW drivers ran again in Sunday’s individual competition. Spengler, Farfus, Priaulx, and Hand made it into the second round, but only Spengler made it to the third round. He was ahead of Green on a drying circuit in the semifinals, but he locked up his brakes near the end, so Green won, leaving Spengler in third. Green lost out to Audi’s Mattias Ekstrom in the final round.
The DTM series now takes a break, resuming competition on the 3.629 km circuit at the Nürburgring on August 19.—Brian S. Morgan, motorsports editor, bmwcca.org.
