BoP trouble and strange tire tactics at BMW: “Artificial intervention taking place”

Not only at Manthey and Porsche, but also in the BMW camp, the mood is low after the Norisring weekend: While Kelvin van der Linde was unable to start on Sunday following a crash on Saturday and left empty-handed, local hero Marco Wittmann’s frustration over the Balance of Performance (BoP) was enormous.

“I think we gave it our all – maximized it once again,” he says after finishing tenth on Sunday on ran.de. “But in my opinion, there must be drastic consequences now because there is artificial intervention taking place, and we are being made extremely slow.”

According to Wittmann, this was already the case the weekend before the Norisring. “That is four races now,” he says. “We basically had no chance at the Lausitzring either, we had to start from the back – and now it is happening again.”

“At some point, there has to be real action”

At the same time, some rivals have been able to “take home maximum points” four times in a row, causing his championship hopes to slip away. “We arrived here seven points behind,” says Wittmann. “You can check for yourselves how much of a gap we have now.”

Since Wittmann only managed six points with a tenth-place finish on Sunday following his retirement on Saturday, the gap for the best-placed BMW driver in the standings has grown from seven to a massive 40 points.

The German, currently sitting in fifth place, does not understand why the BMW M4 GT3 received only marginal increases in boost pressure during the two BoP adjustments on Saturday after qualifying and after the race. On Sunday, the car was also made ten kilograms lighter.

“We were seven tenths behind from Practice 1,” he noted. “That was confirmed throughout the entire weekend. It was the same at the Lausitzring – and at some point, there has to be real action to keep it fair for everyone.”

BMW grid positions are currently disastrous

Apparently, classifying the BMW remains difficult this year even with the new turbocharger: This is due to the fact – as sources suggest – that the car becomes disproportionately faster over the course of a weekend compared to its rivals.

The current grid positions for the BMW drivers are particularly striking: on Saturday, Kelvin van der Linde and Wittmann qualified 17th and 18th at the Norisring. On Sunday, Wittmann started from 18th again. Things were only marginally better at the Lausitzring two weeks prior: on Saturday, Wittmann and van der Linde started 18th and 19th, and on Sunday, 8th and 11th.

What is causing surprise among the competition: Wittmann completely skipped a qualifying simulation during Friday’s free practice in Nuremberg. This is despite the fact that overtaking is difficult on the street circuit and qualifying is currently considered the BMW’s weakness. Furthermore, there was the new DTM spec tire, for which there was no prior data at the Norisring.

Why did Wittmann skip a qualifying simulation?

On Wittmann’s car, the new set of tires that every driver receives on Friday was actually bolted on during the second free practice session. However, it was replaced by a used set after just one lap.

What was the reasoning behind this? “Marco did not complete a qualifying simulation during free practice at the Norisring because, after Kelvin’s qualifying simulation, we decided for strategic reasons to save this set of tires for the race,” a BMW spokeswoman explained.

This sounds unusual, as the two tire allocations in the DTM are strictly separated: one contingent is designated for free practice and testing, while the other, which consisted of only three sets at the Norisring, is for the two race days. Yet BMW speaks of having saved the Friday set “for the race.” How is that possible?

Competitors suspect a BMW trick

In fact, a Friday tire set may be used as a so-called “puncture set” – for example, if a puncture occurs during the race outside of the pit stop window and an additional set is required for a second stop. However, in such a case, the chance of a good result would be very low anyway.

“That makes no sense to me,” says a leading team member from the competition, who wishes to remain anonymous. “Why would I save a set of tires for that when I could perform a qualifying simulation instead, which is something I definitely wouldn’t want to skip at the Norisring?”

Another team member, however, sees an opportunity in the regulations to bring a virtually new tire into the race allocation: to prevent a team from having insufficient tire sets during a two-stop race on Sunday due to damaged tires, they can be replaced by “tires from free practice” according to a regulatory clarification. This must be approved by the technical delegate.

The fact that Wittmann only completed one lap with the new set on Friday would support this theory, as a scrubbed tire reaches temperature faster in a race than a completely new one. “That would be ideal, but then you would have to gamble on a set getting damaged – which would be very unusual,” says the team member, who also wishes to remain anonymous.

“Would never skip a qualifying run at the Norisring”

In his opinion, one would “somehow manage” to have tires replaced due to damage, but doubts about the strategy remain for him as well. “Overall, it makes little sense to me for the Norisring. I would never skip a qualifying run there,” he adds, referring also to the low tire degradation on the street circuit.

The decision to skip a qualifying simulation also makes life harder for the BoP officials: cars are often brought into the scrutineering garage after fast laps on Friday to check weight and fuel levels. This time, they only had data from van der Linde’s car.

The upcoming weekend at Oschersleben will now be particularly important for BMW: a strong result is needed at Schubert’s home race, even though the track does not naturally suit the M4 GT3 Evo, to avoid losing touch with the championship battle completely.

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– The Motorsport.com Team

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com