Lausitzring, Germany – Maxime Martin (BE) was the best-placed BMW driver for the second time this year in the third race of the DTM season. The BMW Team RMG driver came home seventh in the SAMSUNG BMW M4 DTM to pick up six points towards the Drivers’ Championship. Martin is now level with fellow BMW drivers Marco Wittmann (DE) and Martin Tomczyk (DE) on 12 points.

Bruno Spengler (CA) narrowly missed out on the top ten, finishing 11th. He was followed over the line by Tomczyk and Wittmann in 12th and 13th. Timo Glock (DE), António Félix da Costa (PT) and Tom Blomqvist (GB) came home 18th, 19th and 22nd. Augusto Farfus (BR) failed to finish. Victory went to Jamie Green (GB) in an Audi.

BMW Motorsport results:

No 36 Maxime Martin (BE), BMW Team RMG, SAMSUNG BMW M4 DTM – 7th
No 7 Bruno Spengler (CA), BMW Team MTEK, BMW Bank M4 DTM – 11th
No 77 Martin Tomczyk (DE), BMW Team Schnitzer, BMW M Performance Parts M4 DTM – 12th
No 1 Marco Wittmann (DE), BMW Team RMG, Ice-Watch BMW M4 DTM – 13th
No 16 Timo Glock (DE), BMW Team MTEK, DEUTSCHE POST BMW M4 DTM – 18th
No 13 António Félix da Costa (PT), BMW Team Schnitzer, Red Bull BMW M4 DTM – 19th
No 31 Tom Blomqvist (GB), BMW Team RBM, BMW M4 DTM – 22nd
No 18 Augusto Farfus (BR), BMW Team RBM, Shell BMW M4 DTM – DNF

Useful facts:

Seventh place for Maxime Martin equals his best result of the season. He was the best-placed BMW driver in the field for the second time, having first achieved this feat in race one in Hockenheim.

Marco Wittmann and Augusto Farfus were both relegated five grid positions for blocking an opponent in qualifying. They started the race from 11th and 23rd respectively.

Augusto Farfus made up a number of positions at the start, but was forced to retire on lap two after a collision. He made it back to the pit lane, but the Shell BMW M4 DTM was too severely damaged to continue.

The second qualifying session begins at 11:40 on Sunday. Before that, the 15-minute warm-up is scheduled for 09:50.

Bruno Spengler (BMW Team MTEK, 11th): “Unfortunately the first half of my race was not good enough. After that I had good race pace and was actually happy with my car. However, I was just unable to make it into the points. We will now work hard to ensure we do better on Sunday. Tomorrow is a new day."

Maxime Martin (BMW Team RMG, 7th): “The positive thing is that I finished in the points. However, that is not enough to meet the high standards BMW sets itself. Towards the end of the race, you could see that I was no longer able to match the pace of my rivals. We must work hard to rectify that in the future. Finishing as the best-placed BMW driver for the second time is obviously not a bad record for me. I have far more experience than in 2014 and am doing well. Despite this, we cannot generally be happy at the moment.”

Jens Marquardt (BMW Motorsport Director): “After a difficult qualifying, we had an equally tough race today. One car in the points. That is obviously far from satisfactory. Maxime Martin managed to work his way up into fifth place, but tyre problems shortly before the finish meant he was no longer able to match the pace of the leaders without DRS. Our problem is that we cannot get maximum performance out of the tyres over the entire distance. We must now analyse why that is.”

Canadians In BOLD