Audacious Audi sends Rast from back to front
DTM HOCKENHEIM (DEU) 4-5 MAY ROUND 1/9
On the face of it, Marco Wittmann made a great start to the new turbocharged era of the DTM to lead the points for BMW after the opening round. And, make no mistake, the new version of the M4 DTM racer is awesomely quick over a single lap. But in reality, the big question for BMW is how to haul in big rival Audi over race distances.
After Wittmann’s pole-to-flag win in the wet of Saturday, the RS5 DTMS locked out the podium in the dry on Sunday.
That much was hinted at when Audi’s Robin Frijns put in a highly impressive ‘race’ run of 15 laps during FP1 on Friday, which, as it transpired, would be the only dry running before Sunday. That stint by the Dutchman had been on average three to five tenths quicker per lap than the similar-length runs by the BMWS, even if it hadn’t given him a headline lap time.
The paradox – in typically unpredictable DTM style – was that Audi’s Sunday victory came from Rene Rast. That seems an odd thing to say, bearing in mind his six-winson-the-trot run at the end of 2018. But this success owed much to an inspired strategy from 16th position on the grid, after a fuel-system problem in qualifying. Rast made an early pitstop under a safety car, and used the fresh tyres to slice through the field from 15th to the lead within five laps. You can’t make your mandatory stop in the DTM under caution, so Rast would have to pit again, but he now had the advantage of being able to make his second visit to the pits relatively late in the race, giving him a tyre benefit in the late stages too. It was an inspired call by Team Rosberg that kept giving compound interest – all Rast had to do was pick his way through the pack, although you shouldn’t underestimate that task given the traditional chaos on double-file DTM restarts.
New-style DTM, therefore, is all about tyres. Downforce is decreased, power is up to at least 610bhp from the new two-litre four-cylinder units, yet the beauty is that the Hankook control rubber has remained the same as it was with the old V8 machines. They don’t cope so well with the torque of these new engines, with the result that we have utterly modern high-tech machinery sliding around and killing rubber as if they’re old Sierra RS500S. It’s brilliant!
Even more brilliant if you’re driving an Audi. It was Philipp Eng who had used BMW’S – and, to be fair, his own – onelap pace to take a crushing pole on Sunday morning with a lap that demolished the old V8 qualifying records. Wittmann was second on the grid, while top Audi was that of third-placed Frijns, over 0.7s off the pace.
Wittmann’s bid to repeat his Saturday glory unravelled when he lost ground after the restart when he made contact with
Nico Muller’s Audi, and then got punted into a spin by the privateer RS5 of Pietro Fittipaldi. This put him to the back of the field, suckered him into an early ‘let’ssee-what-happens’ pitstop, and then he struggled on his tyres late in the race, although the points for eighth place at least preserved his championship lead.
Eng led until the storming Rast came past, and neither could he hold off Frijns, who put in an incredible 23-lap stint on his first set of tyres without ill-effect.
Eng was also jumped by Muller at the pitstops, consigning him to fourth place.
Unfortunately for Frijns, he lost 4s at his stop, but charged back to finish on the bootlid of second-placed Muller.
There was another who led this race: Paul di Resta in the R-motorsport Aston Martin. After qualifying a superb third in the wet on Saturday before retiring with brake problems, di Resta used his nous to dive into the pits after Loic Duval’s safety-cartriggering off, but before the SC boards were produced. He could therefore stay out until the finish, but his Vantage was losing 3s per lap to the chasing Rast, so he made a second stop before recovering to seventh, and with another lap would have passed the BMW of Timo Glock, whose tyres were wilting.
As well as his win, Rast was the only driver who could hold a candle to Wittmann on Saturday. Unlike the other Audi drivers who started on fresh wet-weather tyres, Rast found the grip he needed to glide onto the BMW’S tail and shadow it until he pulled off the circuit with gearbox problems with five laps remaining. His
Audi stablemates Mike Rockenfeller and Frijns therefore moved up to second and third, both bemoaning the performance of their rubber. Glock should have made it two BMWS on the podium, but was turned around at Turn 1 following the start after a nudge from Rast, and spent the race burning back through the order to fourth. MARCUS SIMMONS