Why the Schubert team is facing an even greater qualifying challenge with the BMW Evopaket and how they are fighting to make progress
Last year, the BMW Team Schubert had great difficulty competing for top positions in qualifying in the DTM with the M4 GT3 and often started from the back of the grid, which made the races a real tour de force. Are they better positioned this year with the Evo version of the car, which made its DTM debut in Oschersleben?
“We don’t see any major differences at the moment,” said team boss Torsten Schubert at the DTM opening weekend. “There are a few things we still need to understand about the axle geometry so that the driver has a little better feedback again. Everything has been made more gentle and suitable for long distances, which is not necessarily the right thing for a sprint race like this.”
This statement raises fears that it could be even harder for the team to get the Pirelli tires up to temperature this DTM season. But there is hope: as the best Schubert driver in qualifying, Marco Wittmann was not “eight or nine tenths” behind as feared, but “only” half a second.
BMW sees “step in the right direction”
“After the test drives, we would have expected to be further behind,” says BMW Motorsport Director Andreas Roos, who knows that Oschersleben is not really a good track for the M4 GT3. “On top of that, we don’t have unlimited testing opportunities. We will definitely learn from one or two races. It’s good to see that we’ve been able to take a step in the right direction.”
However, he attributes this only to a limited extent to the improvements made to the car in terms of drivability and usability. “As the name suggests, this is an evolution of the previous car,” explains Roos. “We’ve tried to improve the car in a number of areas, including the adjustment options and how the setup can be done.”
Qualifying experiments at Schubert
However, the DTM efforts are focused on the processes for getting the unheated tires to work faster. The team is trying “to find the best way to prepare the tires for qualifying and then get the most out of them,” explains Roos.
Schubert opted for different qualifying strategies at the season opener: While Wittmann, like many other drivers, did two so-called out-in laps at the start of qualifying to warm up the tires evenly over the heated brakes by having the mechanics spin them in the pits, Rast was the only driver to do three warm-up laps in both qualifying sessions. “With Rene, we said we’d run it in over the whole car and then turn it outside,” explains Schubert.
It was a strategy that didn’t quite pay off, as Rast qualified in 16th and 15th place and was slower than his teammate. In addition, the low track temperatures are currently making life difficult for the M4 GT3 Evo. And then there is the frustrating preparation phase for the 2025 DTM season.
Schubert on BoP chaos: “You can save yourself the test work.”
At the official DTM test day in early April, when the Evo model was unveiled for the first time, the Schubert team had to cope with a higher ground clearance due to the Balance of Performance (BoP), which had a negative effect on aerodynamics and balance.
However, this was withdrawn on Friday morning of the first race weekend by SRO technical director Claude Surmont, who is responsible for BoP, and replaced with last year’s values. How does BMW explain the back and forth? “I think Claude saw after the tests that the Evo is performing in the same window as the previous car,” Roos replies.
Team boss Schubert wonders, “What insights between the official test and the race led to such changes? Then you might as well save yourself the whole day of testing,” he says, annoyed. On top of that, a minimum angle for the rear wing was introduced before the Oschersleben weekend.
“That was never announced before and wasn’t even on the car during testing,” Schubert shakes his head, because the team went into free practice completely unprepared. ‘Then you can only try one thing with each driver, also because you don’t have the new tires you need.’
