After four of five planned days of testing in the BMW M4 GT3 before the DTM season opener at the end of May, Schubert newcomer Rene Rast is not yet at the level of teammate Sheldon van der Linde, who as champion is the BMW benchmark. But will the longtime Audi driver be able to adjust his driving style to the new car?
“You can never tell if the point will come that you really drive on the same level as Sheldon,” he says in an interview with “Motorsport-Total.com”. “I hope that the BMW will one day fit me like a glove, but it’s not certain that that will happen. I’ll do everything I can, but unfortunately there’s no guarantee that it worked last year.”
As a reminder: in 2022 the three-time DTM champion needed two race weekends after his comeback to perfectly adapt to the Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II and to win his first race of the season at Imola.
“Tendency to force the car into corners too much”
But how is the situation at Rast after two private days of testing in Oschersleben and the official two-day DTM test in Spielberg? “A bit of fine-tuning still needs to be done,” says the ex-Audi works driver, who was 0.279 seconds behind his team-mate on his fastest lap on Sunday in Spielberg.
While Rast set the time in the eighth of nine laps in the evening, van der Linde did it in the sixth of seven laps in the afternoon. So the stints were comparable – and the late point in the stint is not unusual either, since the Pirelli needs a long time to build up grip, especially in the low temperatures, and has no real peak.
“Driving style is still the issue,” explains Rast. “With Sheldon you can see that he slows down the car and then accelerates early again. I still see a tendency in myself to try to force the car into corners too much. The synapses in my head still have to be linked and the others will be deleted. I’m sure that will take a while.”
That’s how important the comparison with BMW colleagues is
It was all the more important that Rast was not the only BMW driver on the track on the second day of testing in Spielberg, as van der Linde and Wittmann were still in action at the Nürburgring.
Instead, he also had a reference through the data and onboard comparison for his 149 of a total of 279 laps in Spielberg. “That was a big help, because if you’re the only BMW, then – even if you’re first – you have no basis to say whether what I’m doing here is good or bad,” he explains.
How do the Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II and the BMW M4 GT3 differ? The mid-engine vehicle from Ingolstadt has its strengths in cornering speed and on the brakes, while the front-engine car from Munich gets the lap time when accelerating using the engine power.
“Don’t try to reinvent the wheel”
“So you have to put all your focus on being at full throttle early and using the engine to bring all the power to the straight,” explains Rast. “It’s a bit different than the Audi.”
What makes it even more difficult for Rast: if you consciously forgo high cornering speeds, it feels like you’re not at the limit. “You think to yourself: You can actually drive faster, but you have to force yourself not to do it so that you have the good outcome that the BMW is good for,” explains Rast.
“It’s still weird. And I often catch myself pushing too much in the corner and then realizing at the end of the corner: I was too fast again and then didn’t get a good exit. It’s not always easy.”
Nevertheless, Rast, whose Schubert team has planned another test day in Oschersleben in May, doesn’t want to act and continue to fine-tune his driving style. “You can’t try to reinvent the wheel now,” he explains his approach. “You have to give it time and trust that your driving style will eventually take over and that it will work.”