Marco Wittmann “very disappointed” to lose first win of the season

BMW Motorsport’s Marco Wittmann had what initially seemed like an almost perfect day at Zandvoort, qualifying in second place on the grid and taking his M4 DTM to his first victory of the year, leaping to second in the drivers’ championship as a result.

“I had a good start and my mission was to build up a gap,” Wittmann told TouringCarTimes. “I had a good start and focussed on my target. I stopped early to cover a possible safety car situation.”

Although it looked like the reigning champion had the situation under control, things were more complicated inside the cockpit: “The problem here is always the front-left tyre. On the last laps I had a lot of vibration and there were already lots of tyre failures around, so I was happy to be able to bring it home.”

Joy didn’t last long for Wittmann, who was excluded after the stewards were unable to extract the mandatory 1kg of fuel from his BMW M4 DTM. The Team RMG driver remained philosophical about it.

“I am obviously very disappointed, but as a driver there is nothing you can do about it. We have to accept it and ensure that nothing like this happens again. It was still a mega weekend for me.

“Our pace was very good. I have always liked Zandvoort, it’s an old school, high-speed track, one of my favourites,” he concluded.

Wittmann now drops to eighth in the drivers’ stnadings as a result of his no-score in Zandvoort’s second race, with Timo Glock back to being the best-placed BMW driver in fourth, 24 points behind championship leader Mattias Ekström.