Saturday’s race at the Hockenheimring saw Timo Glock return to the strong form he showed at the season-opener at the same venue. The German came home third to claim a podium result in the penultimate race of the 2018 DTM season. This was BMW’s 15th podium of the season. Bruno Spengler finished ninth to score two points.
Philipp Eng and Joel Eriksson had to settle for 12th and 15th place at the end of an eventful race. Marco Wittmann and Augusto Farfus failed to finish. René Rast took the race win.
Jens Marquardt (BMW Motorsport Director):
“It was a very eventful race and we can be happy with the third place. We started from fourth, eighth and twelfth. Timo Glock cut through the field really well. I feel sorry for Augusto Farfus and Marco Wittmann, who were unable to finish the race. You could see that there was a lot going on out on the track. Looking ahead to tomorrow, we have to do a focussed job in qualifying when we will hopefully be able to score some decent points again. There was certainly more in it for us today, however, with so much action, you really have to be happy with any car that makes it to the finish. All in all, the race featured everything that makes the DTM special: close racing, great battles and overtaking manoeuvres galore. On the whole, it was a great advertisement for the DTM.”
“In short, that was a really bad day for me. The repairs needed after my mistake in qualifying cost us a lot of time. That meant we were unable to take part in qualifying. We then actually paced ourselves very well in the race. I still had a lot of DRS activations left at the end, and had relatively fresh tyres at the restart. I think I was running sixth when I lost downforce behind Paul di Resta and had to drive through the dirt. With all the dust and dirt in the car, something broke and the race was over.”
Timo Glock (#16 DEUTSCHE POST BMW M4 DTM, BMW Team RMR – qualifying result: 3rd place, race result: 3rd place, points: 143):
“Hockenheim is my living room. Every race here is a real cracker. The circuit really suits our cars. It is ideal for putting on a good show – and we did that again today. I was following the battle between René Rast and Gary Paffett on the big screens whenever I passed them, and was just thinking: ‘Hey guys, wait for me. I’ll be there soon.’ In the end, we had to settle for third place. It is a shame that we didn’t have a chance against Robin Frijns and his fresh tyres after the safety car period, however, our pace was good. Congratulations to René on his fifth race win in a row. That is a really remarkable effort. We will now look ahead to tomorrow and see whether we can challenge then.”