Martin Tomczyk confident of 2014 turnaround

BMW’s Martin Tomczyk is confident he will not endure another nightmare DTM season in 2014.

Tomczyk, who will begin his 14th DTM season in 2014, endured the worst year of his career with the RMG BMW team in 2013.

After winning the 2011 DTM title with Audi, he moved to the newly formed RMG BMW outfit for 2012.

Tomczyk started his debut BMW season strongly with RMG, and was third in the drivers’ standings until the sixth round of the year at the Nürburgring.

He then failed to score in the remaining four rounds of the season, and dropped to eighth by the end of the year.

In 2013, Tomczyk’s bad luck continued and he had to wait an entire year until the Nürburgring to score his only points of the year with fifth place.

He ended the year 19th in the drivers’ championship with 10 points.

“I can say it [the 2014 season] definitely won’t be the same as the season I had last year,” Tomczyk told TouringCarTimes. “I know BMW, I know what we’re developing with the new M4 and I know what the plans are as to how to get more competitive with all the drivers again.

“This makes it easier to say that it will be much better.

“In the DTM you need everything to be perfectly prepared. There are always four factors that have to work together; that’s the driver, the team, the car and the manufacturer.

“If these four things don’t match up perfectly, then you can’t get 100% out of the package and that was definitely the case last season.

“We’re still in the moment where we are trying to find what we can do better. We can see these four aspects and are trying to figure out what the best package will be for me in 2014.”

Tomczyk added his biggest problem in 2013 was being unable to establish what caused the drop-off in performance between the Nürburgring 2012 and 2013 races.

“I’ve had previous seasons which, well, were similar to 2013. However, the only difference is that I knew then what was going wrong, so it was easy to work against that.

“We never really knew why we weren’t as competitive as the others, so whilst it’s a small difference, it’s a huge thing in the end because you don’t know what you have to work on to get rid of the bad situation.

“I’d say that was quite difficult. Not just for me as the driver, but also for the team and the manufacturer.

“For me as a driver, all I can do is just the same as my years before 2013, because when you don’t know why the situation [like 2013] is so bad, you can’t say, “okay, I have to work hard on that part of the whole package.””

“That was not the case. I’ve already proved I’m quite a fast race driver, so I’ll carry on like that in 2014 and hope it’s not as bad as last year.”

Despite his troubled 2013, Tomczyk still believes he is capable of adding to his DTM title; this time behind the wheel of a BMW.

However, he did not reveal whether he would be aiming to do so with the RMG team.

“BMW haven’t yet done the driver allocation and these things are up to them, so we [the drivers] don’t know which teams we will be with in 2014.

“[But] when I came here, my goal was not just to change manufacturer, but to win the championship with BMW and that’s still my goal.

“I’ve only just turned 32, so, when I compare to some of the other drivers in the DTM, I’m on the older side, but I’m still young.

“I still feel the spirit and the fire burning to prove to myself I can win another championship.”