The surprise party was organized at short notice, because on Saturday nobody at BMW and the Schubert team had it on their radar that Rene Rast was celebrating his 100th DTM race on Sunday: But before the race there was a cake – stickers for the car with the inscription RR100 were made at the last moment and congratulated team manager Torsten Schubert.
“Now I feel a bit old,” grins Rast at ‘ran.de’. “I don’t think anyone in the DTM has that many races in this field. It was incredibly quick to be the oldest DTM driver with the most races from 2017 up to now.”
Not quite right, Rene! Because Rast is only the driver with the third most races in the 2023 DTM season. Project 1 BMW brand colleague Marco Wittmann and Winward Mercedes driver Lucas Auer were even more diligent.
Two active drivers with more DTM races than Rast
The Franconian, who has been driving the DTM since 2013 and has been champion twice, has a total of 172 races to his credit; the Austrian, who entered the DTM in 2015, has already completed 131.
After Rast, the most experienced DTM drivers are Landgraf-Mercedes driver Maro Engel and Schubert-BMW champion Sheldon van der Linde with 86 and 72 appearances respectively.
Rast’s goal is clear: The 36-year-old, who has ended his Formula E career at least for the time being, wants to expand his title tally with three championships in the traditional series so far – and go for “Mr. DTM” Bernd Schneider.
Rast gives information on DTM whereabouts
“Of course that’s the goal, of course,” grins Rast. “Bernd has five, I only have three. It will be a bit more difficult this year, but I’m still young.”
A hint that Rast will also start in the DTM next season. Nothing should stand in the way of that, because the BMW works driver is also scheduled to compete in the WEC endurance championship and in Le Mans in the LMDh car at WRT in 2024 – and there are no overlaps between the WEC and DTM.
His program for 2024 has not yet been officially announced. This season, with a third title, things are actually looking bad, because Rast is only eighth in the championship with 67 points and six races to go. Teammate Sheldon van der Linde has 103 points, SSR Lamborghini driver Mirko Bortolotti leads the championship with 138 points.
“Mean” yield and penalty for collision at 100th race
Even if he hadn’t been unable to compete in Zandvoort because of Formula E, he wouldn’t be leading the classification, because Rast didn’t score points in three of his eight races in addition to the zero in the Netherlands.
At the Lausitzring, the result was “poor” with an eighth and an eleventh place in the 100th race, as he himself admits. Actually, Rast had moved up one place to eleventh due to a five-second penalty for brand colleague Wittmann on Sunday, but then the stewards gave him a five-second penalty for a collision with Alessio Deledda – and he was eleventh again .
“Of course I would have wished for a little more for my 100th race,” he says – and refers to the generally poor performance of the BMW teams. “It was obvious that we didn’t have the conditions this weekend to be competitive. I was the 15th best placed BMW driver in qualifying on Sunday – that says it all I think. In the race I made up a few places but there was nothing else in it.”