Marco Wittmann says it is difficult to determine where the causes of BMW’s pace deficit to Audi lies, saying the Munich manufacturer needs to analyze and see where it is missing pace.
Wittmann and Sheldon van der Linde took BMW’s first podiums of the season at the Lausitzring, with Van der Linde finishing second on Saturday and Wittmann taking a late third on Sunday.
Despite these podium results, BMW still lacks behind Audi. In the manufacturer standings, Audi has scored more than double the points of BMW, with the points tally sitting at 283 versus 107.
When asked in the post-race press conference on where the difference between Audi and BMW lies, Wittmann explained it’s hard to point to a specific area of improvement.
“It’s difficult, because in the end, with a DTM car you need to have the full package,” the double champion said. “It’s the engine, it’s the aero, it’s the mechanical grip, the tyre, how they work.
So it’s an overall package and clearly we need to analyze and see where we are missing this pace . It’s difficult to point out one specific topic where we can improve, let’s say.
Because if we would know, we would do so, you know. And at the end, in Spa, we had a huge gap, yesterday we were a bit better, today we were a bit worse. We have to see and somehow hopefully find it to make their lives a bit more difficult.”
Hard to keep up with Audi
Wittmann said he was pleased to take the first podium of the season, but pointed out that it was hard to keep up with Audi’s pace.
“Generally, we struggled a bit with pace clearly, especially in qualifying. And I mean, if you start from seventh and you finish on the podium, I think you can be happy.”
“We actually had a super quick start, jumped two Audis and then took quite a bit of risk in the first three of four corners and was finding me in third after two laps, so that was very positive.
“Especially in the second stint, we could not go the pace as the Audi’s did, but luckily I could make the move on Robin [Frijns] in the second to last lap, so at least we finished on the podium.
“So at the end, pretty much a kind of good weekend for us, but clearly our aim is something different. My aim is to be on the top step where Rene [Rast] was today. But therefore, we need to work on.
We are missing a bit of pace to them, quite a lot actually, today in quali. Also in race pace, at end the gap to Nico and Rene was [still big], so there is still a lot of work for us to do.”
