After Britain’s Tom Blomqvist was announced as the final driver to join BMW Motorsport’s ranks earlier this week, the driver pairings for the Munich manufacturer’s renewed assault on the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) have now been set in stone.
The pairing of defending champion Marco Wittmann and last year’s “Rookie of the year,” Belgium’s Maxime Martin, will remain at Team RMG for this season, with Stefan Reinhold’s outfit looking to defend the Team Title it secured.
Bruno Spengler, who took the 2012 drivers’ title with Team Schnitzer, now joins Ernst Knoors’ Team MTEK alongside Timo Glock, who will start his third successive year in the DTM with the team. António Félix da Costa now ends up switching to Schnitzer for this season, taking the Franco-Canadian’s place alongside 2011 champion, Martin Tomczyk.
Augusto Farfus will be remaining with Bart Mampaey’s Team RBM, who he has raced for since he joined the DTM back in 2012, and will have newcomer Blomqvist alongside him at the Belgian-based outfit.
Motorsport Director Jens Marquardt is happy with the line-up they have for the forthcoming campaign, where BMW will look to achieve that elusive clean sweep that they achieved back in 2012, especially with a diverse mix of talent amongst their ranks.
“At the end of every season, we analyse whether and how we can make any minor changes to tease a little more out of the overall set-up. We remain true to our philosophy that we can only enjoy long-term success in the DTM with four teams of equal strength,” he said, with 31 wins coming from the drivers that they have at the moment. “We have had positive experiences with this approach in the past. We are confident that we have found the ideal line-up for the 2015 season, in which we will face a number of new challenges with the new format of the race weekends.”
Reinhold is looking forward to what the new season will bring for Team RMG, especially with the same driver line-up, titles to their name and the atmosphere that currently resides within the outfit: “We learned a lot as a team in 2014 and won five races with Marco and Maxime. We worked hard to improve during the break from the DTM. We now want to put the improvements into practice on the track in the new season. Our work has been focussed on our main goal, which is to be successful again in 2015 – something we are well aware will be far from easy in the extremely competitive DTM.”
Team Schnitzer team Principal, Charly Lamm, is looking forward to how da Costa and Tomczyk will fare at the Freilassing-based squad, who took the team title back in 2012, when Spengler won the drivers’ title with them: “We have a fascinating and very promising mix of drivers for 2015, with Martin’s experience and António’s youthful exuberance. We enjoyed great success with Bruno Spengler, especially winning the title on our DTM comeback in 2012. We will now be going all out to challenge at the front of the 2015 DTM field with the new driver line-up.”
Mampaey is also looking forward to what the new season will bring, when the action gets underway at Hockenheim in May: “Augusto has gained a lot of experience in the DTM over the past three years, and has shown that he is capable of winning races and putting himself in contention for the title. In Tom, we welcome on board a fast young driver, who has everything he needs to find his feet quickly in the DTM. I am very much looking forward to working with these two drivers in 2015.”
Knoors himself, who was working in the world of Formula One before joining the BMW effort back in 2013, is looking to take further steps forward, especially with the partnering of Glock and Spengler.
“In Bruno and Timo, we have two very good drivers in our ranks,” explained the Dutchman. “As 2012 champion, and with his vast wealth of experience, Bruno is an institution in this series. And he also sets the bar extremely high when it comes to speed. Timo also knows how it feels to stand on the very top step of the podium, and is now very familiar with the DTM. I have great faith in both of them.”
May 2nd sees the return of the DTM to action, when the lights will go out for the first time after a long off-season, where it will be the first time that two races will have been run since 2000.