Bruno Spengler: “You cannot win all the time”

Bruno Spengler could be forgiven for being slightly downbeat about his 2013 DTM season.

After switching to BMW for its 2012 comeback year after seven seasons with Mercedes, the French-Canadian took the title in his first season with the Münich manufacturer.

In doing so, he and the iconic Schnitzer team he was assigned to drive for, took four wins and three pole positions. Impressive, considering it was BMW’s first DTM season in 20 years.

For Spengler and Schnitzer then, the successes of 2012 were going to be very hard to beat and 2013 proved this.

Whilst scoring two pole positions, Spengler won just one race this season after he led a BMW 1-2-3 home at Spielberg and he edged marginally ahead of eventual 2013 DTM champion, Mike Rockenfeller, to take the lead of the drivers’ championship.

Following this victory, his title defence then became more difficult. After all of the BMW teams struggled with pace in the middle of the season, Spengler then failed to score in any of the races between Moscow and Zandvoort due to contact with other drivers, or as was the case at the Dutch track, a grid penalty.

When TouringCarTimes spoke to Spengler at the start of the off-season, he described 2013 as “definitely not one of the worst seasons” of his DTM career.

Following an impressive drive to third at the Hockenheim season finale, he managed to recover from dropping to fifth in the championship to a respectable third; something which was seemingly becoming more difficult for Spengler given his run of four non-scoring finishes.

Amidst reflecting on his 2013 season and other matters, Spengler told TouringCarTimes what it’s like to lose a championship, his thoughts on BMW’s 2014 DTM challenger – the M4 – and why BMW still needs time to develop.

TouringCarTimes: Can you summarise your 2013 DTM season, and did it turn out as you expected it to? 

Bruno Spengler: Well, I never expect anything going into a season and before I know how the car is. I’ve never been into expectations or predictions, so I never predict anything; I just go into the season, try to do my best with the maximum motivation and then see what the outcome is. You know what it’s like in that every season is different anyway, so just try to do your best all season. At the end of the year, you saw what came out late in the championship with a lot of bad luck for me.

TcT: Did you feel any different heading into this season knowing you were the DTM champion? 

BS: Not really, no. Of course, somewhere in the back of your mind you know you won the championship and it’s a very nice feeling, but I’m someone who sets up new goals from the very start. I don’t sit on my old achievements or old bad luck. I like to move on very fast, and I think I did that in 2013. Being champion? Well, that didn’t change me or how I go about my racing, my season or my approach and I started the season just like the others because I didn’t go into the year thinking “well, I won the championship and it’s okay, I can relax.” I wanted to achieve more, I wanted to do the best season possible and I was motivated for it.

TcT: So, where does this season fit into your DTM career? 

BS: Well it’s difficult to do a ranking, but this season is definitely not one of the worst [laughs]. It belongs in the ‘good season’ category. We were performing, but had a lot of bad luck. You know, there were four times without points which were definitely not always my fault, so if you take this into account, 2013 was definitely not one of the worst seasons. We got two pole positions, one race win and still managed to finish third in the championship, so it was good. Of course I was disappointed with the bad luck I had and not being able to always score points, but you cannot win all the time, right?

TcT: What’s it like to realise that the championship you’re defending is lost, and when did you realise that? 

BS: Well I still believed in the championship until Oschersleben because I had a very good chance up until then. But yeah, you know, with zero points again there, that was it. It was tough and that was the end of the championship for me. On that day for sure I was disappointed and not happy at all, because I wanted to fight for the championship until the end and right up until the last race. But after that, I set myself a new target and that was to try and finish in the top-three of the championship and that worked out, so in the end I was pretty happy.

TcT: What can you take from 2013, and how will you be applying that next season?

BS: I think the learning process is on going, and especially so in racing. I think there is a lot we can take from this season. We saw this year that there are new possibilities with the new tyres and new possibilities for strategy. There are a lot more small things possible than there were in the past. For example, sometimes Rockenfeller managed to come from 15th on the grid to fourth or fifth in the race like he did at the Norisring. If you mess it up in qualifying, you now have a bigger chance of coming back on Sunday. I think the races now are more strategy dependent because if you get the strategy right, you gain a lot, so If you don’t, you lose. I guess for us at Schnitzer and BMW, remember that we have next to no experience because it’s only our second year. I think Mercedes and Audi have a lot more data to fall back on from the last 10 years, but for us with these shortened weekends without any Friday practice, well, that maybe hurt us a little bit more than the others. We just don’t have the experience. I think in this aspect, we’ve learnt a lot and can apply that next year.

TcT: Speaking of Mercedes, you spent seven seasons with them from 2005 to 2011. Have you been able to pass on any of your experience to BMW and Schnitzer? 

BS: Yeah, of course and Martin [Tomczyk] was too when he came from Audi. We tried to give as much of our experience as possible, but set-up and philosophies are different and we can’t take everything we learnt in the last seven years and go “hey, this is what we know” and leave it there. The teams at BMW all have very good engineers, mechanics and a whole set of very good people, so that’s why the drivers can’t just say “this is our data, so we have to do that.” Everyone is very motivated and hungry to win, so I’m not worried about that. I think it’s just a question of getting more data, doing more races and getting more kilometres.

TcT: Are you happier then at BMW than you were at Mercedes?

BS: It’s tough to say, but BMW is a great brand and I’m really happy to represent their cars. I’m also really happy at Schnitzer. There is a really great group of people there; good mechanics, good engineers and a really good team manager in Charly Lamm. I’m happy. It’s good thing.

TcT: On the back of RBM’s successes in the DTM over the last few seasons, would you say they are equally as iconic a team as Schnitzer in BMW’s history?

BS: I don’t know, really. I think you should probably ask that question to another person, because this isn’t really my side of things. Anyway, I think RBM achieved great stuff in the past with Andy [Priaulx] in the World Touring Car Championship so I think both of these teams have a very good place in BMW’s history. Either way, I think all the teams at BMW are good and they all performed very well in 2013. I mean, look at MTEK for example. They performed great in their first year, I’d say amazingly actually. Of course they have some good information from last year which is a key thing. RMG, well, they’ve been a bit unlucky this year but no, I don’t think one is better than the other. We’re all at a very strong level.

TcT: Looking ahead, can you say anything about the BMW M4 which you’ll be driving in 2014?

BS: Well, the chassis will stay the same for all the teams, but I’m really excited about it actually. I’ve seen the road car which looks really, really nice. It’s very aggressive and to be honest, quite a bit different to the M3 so I’m looking forward to seeing how the race car turns out. Of course, there’ll be development work to and it’s also a new shape, which gives us new bits to work on. I can’t really say much more really because I haven’t driven the race car yet and that makes it pretty difficult to comment or judge how it’ll behave or what’s going to happen. We haven’t really started developing the shape of the M4 either, actually. First off, we need to do the development and then move to testing. I’m really looking forward to that as a new car is always something exciting for a racing driver.

TcT: And will you be a Schnitzer driver again in 2014?

BS: Yeah, I’d be more than happy to and I don’t see why anything should change. However we need to wait for the final decision by BMW which will be announced on December 7th.

TcT: So, final question. How would you sum up your 2013 season in three words? 

BS: [Laughs] Happy. Disappointing. Surprising!