The simple pit stop mistake that might have cost Rast a victory at DTM Oschersleben

After Sunday’s DTM race in Oschersleben, when driver René Rast met the mechanic who made a critical error during a decisive pit stop, the mechanic had tears in his eyes and instinctively put his sunglasses back on.

But the Schubert BMW driver, who finished fifth instead of second after a race to catch up from 15th place, encouraged his team mate for the effort.

“I’ve had really strong pit stops for two and a half years now, I’ve always gained positions, and today I dropped back two or three positions,” Rast shrugs in an interview with Autosport.com. “This is a completely new situation for the guys: four pit stops in one race. That’s a lot of pressure, especially when you come into the pits with two or three cars. It can happen – I’m not mad at anyone for that.”

Torsten Schubert: “We win and lose as a team”

What had happened? Thanks to a perfect strategy, the Schubert-BMW driver was already in second place from 15th on the grid, when the second stop went wrong.

Rast’s stop took 9.281 seconds due to problems at both the front and left corners, while the following pack, including Jules Gounon, Jordan Lee Pepper and Thomas Preining were dispatched two seconds faster and got past.

“The moment you are a tiny bit too early on the wheel gun, you can’t get the nut back in place,” explained Schubert-BMW’s Team Principal Torsten Schubert. “This is the first time on this position that it hasn’t quite worked out. We win and lose as a team.”

The wheel was not correctly positioned on the centre lock, which meant that the nut did not grip and the mechanic had to push it in. That’s what cost the extra time.

Rast can fully understand the emotional reaction of his mechanic. “The guys train a lot, they put their heart and soul into it. And when one or two of them are responsible for a podium or no podium, they naturally take it with them. Without that second pit stop, we would have finished second.”

How Rast was a contender for victory from 15th place

René Rast, Schubert Motorsport BMW M4 GT3.

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

How did Rast manage to return to the track in second place after the first pit stop behind the eventual winner Ayhancan Güven? The pit crew also played a decisive role here.

“If we start from 15th place, we have the right to choose our tyres,” he says, referring to the rule that only the top 10 have to start on the qualifying tyres. So the Schubert team opted for the last remaining brand-new set of tyres for Rast and team-mate Marco Wittmann, who finished sixth.

“This gave us a huge advantage over those who didn’t have new tyres, and so we muddled our way through the field,” Rast explained. “I was somewhere around tenth place after the first lap, and the top ten had to stop early because they no longer had good tyres. I can ride longer with the new tyres – and ride faster for longer.”

Fabulous during the first pit stops

René Rast, Schubert Motorsport BMW M4 GT3.

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

As the race unfolded, a leading group was involved in a direct duel after their stops, while Rast had a clear track. When he came in shortly before the end of the first stop window, his crew managed a fabulous pit stop time of 6.518 seconds.

Only one other driver stopped faster: Schubert team-mate Wittmann, in 6.241 seconds.

This stop meant that Rast was suddenly second, but unable to keep up with Güven’s pace because he had a used set of tyres on the car. “Everyone around him was on new tyres – and then you are at the limit,” explained Schubert.

In the end, Rast opted for a qualifying tyre from Saturday. “But it didn’t do me any good,” says Rast. “It had 20 laps less on it, and in theory should have been five to seven tenths faster than those in front of me, but we still weren’t faster.”

Alluding to the balance of performance in the DTM, Rast concluded that his result is, “the pace we actually have compared to the others.” In the end, he is satisfied with fifth place after botched Saturday qualifying, saying: “I think we would have signed that before the weekend.”