Sometimes luck is just not with you and in Munich for the DTM Show Event it certainly abandoned Augusto Farfus. Technical problems plagued the Brazilian driver and so he was not able to demonstrate just what his Castrol EDGE BMW M3 DTM was capable of on the track inside the Olympic Stadium.
On Saturday it was a faulty radio that robbed him of the chance to move forward from the semi to quarter finals. In this relay style competition he was teamed with Bruno Spengler in the BMW Bank M3 DTM. The driver from Curitiba started and was due to handover after three laps to his fellow BMW driver, who was waiting in the pits. Unfortunately all communications to his car went down and so he didn’t hear the call to pit.
“I couldn’t hear the radio. I did all the run with no communications from the team. It was working in the team’s area but when I started driving there was nothing at all. I was not sure if I was on the third lap or not. I actually thought I was on the third lap, but when I got no call to go into the pits I continued driving and thought I was wrong and there must be another lap to go. It is a shame because we could really have done well.”
On Sunday he beat Christian Vietoris (Mercedes) to go through to come up against Bruno in the quarter finals, which then had a pit stop element. Unfortunately when he pitted there was an electrical problem with the gantry and so the obligatory tyre change could not happen.
“In the car I had no idea what had happened. I was a bit ahead of Bruno and knew with a good pit stop I had a great chance of moving forward. It was such a shame and obviously I am very disappointed.”
The one saving factor for him was that this was not a round of the DTM series and so no points were awarded. It was literally a show event and as it was in the heart of BMW land – a short walk to the manufacturer’s headquarters – there were lots of fans supporting Augusto and the other five BMW DTM drivers. Obviously everyone was disappointed, but still the fans saw a great show with some exciting racing.
For the event the organisers had a pretty herculean task to transform what also used to be the home of the Bayern Munich football team into two identical 614 metre long race tracks running parallel with each other. They used 45 dump trucks to transport 21,000 tons of gravel, then the workers building it installed 4,800 tons of asphalt.
Despite the disappointment, the event started with a very exciting trip for all the BMW drivers. They were taken for a climb onto the roof of the Olympic Stadium and were able to see the track and lots of Munich from a vantage point 40 metres up. All safety precautions were taken for this trip which the 28-year-old driver said was a lot of fun.
For further information on Augusto Farfus, please visit his website at www.farfus.com. There you will find all news and background information on the racing driver from Curitiba.
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