Why BMW lost the 2019 DTM title

Defeat in the DTM to Audi, an initially promising Formula E season unravelling and an exit from the World Endurance Championship after just one season. The 2019 season has been anything but a stellar one for BMW, and its defeat in the DTM offers more questions than answers.

That's partly down to the fact that BMW motorsport director Jens Marquardt has not been an ever-present media figurehead at the DTM this year, with Rudolf Dittrich, the manufacturer's manager of vehicle development, often stepping in for quick soundbites at the media pen instead.

But Audi's utter domination of the 2019 DTM season - it sealed the manufacturers' title two rounds early at the Lausitzring in August, with a total of 858 points to BMW's 463 - means BMW has some soul-searching to do over the final two weekends at the Nurburgring and Hockenheim to prepare for 2020.

Exiting the Lausitzring, Autosport was told of rumours of discontent within BMW's line-up and, while that has yet to be substantiated, it would be understandable considering how difficult it has been for all the BMW drivers to extract the most from the M4 DTM.

In reality, the 2019 title fight is effectively between Audi pairing Rene Rast and Nico Muller, with Marco Wittmann the only BMW driver in contention, even if it's unlikely that he'll claim a third title.

While BMW drivers and management have been cagey on its underperformance this year - largely pointing to the fact that it has taken six wins from 14 - it's an inescapable fact that Wittmann has been the only driver to regularly put the M4 DTM at the front of the field, with four of the six BMW victories coming through him.

Philipp Eng has at times found the sweet spot, but difficult showings at Assen and Brands Hatch ruled him out of the title hunt. Meanwhile, Bruno Spengler managed to put together a strong effort to win at the Norisring.

When Dittrich was asked by Autosport why Wittmann and Eng often rose above other BMW drivers, he said: "Well, first of all, it's not much. It's not like they are worlds apart from the rest of the BMW drivers; it's a hundredth or a tenth at best [in qualifying].

Over the course of the season, Audi evolved to remove BMW's early advantage, most obviously through reliability

"But obviously if you have cars between them it looks like more of a gap. It's always been the case that some cars are more to one driver's liking than the others'. It looks like this year the car and maybe the set-up would work for Marco and Philipp and that's what we can say.

"Also, obviously, the winter testing was very limited so we didn't have the chance to elaborate on the individual set-up for each driver, not enough time during the available time in winter testing. There's evolution during the year."

The evolution point is salient, as early signs in 2019 pointed to BMW having a one-lap advantage over Audi at the beginning of the Class One era, which helped it place more of its cars inside the top 10 than Audi in the season-opening Hockenheim races.

But over the course of the season, Audi evolved to remove BMW's early advantage, most obviously through reliability. Marquardt himself admitted his belief that DTM teams had underestimated the challenge of integrating the two-litre turbos for 2019.

"I think we all underestimated what a major job it is to integrate those four-cylinder engines into the car and [they're] still things that we learn race by race," said Marquardt.

"Things are popping up that we hadn't seen either in testing or in the races so far. Every track obviously this year is a new game for the whole package, and that's what I think we are all going through."

While Audi, BMW and R-Motorsport Aston Martin all had to modify sections such as the steering-wheel column due to the different vibrations caused by Class 1 power units, Audi and BMW could rely on their Le Mans 24 Hours experiences and road-car developments to help ease the problems, with Audi's diesel-powered Le Mans projects particularly useful.

Reliability was another area BMW in which started promisingly, with not a single car failing to be classified at the finish of the opening four races at Hockenheim and Zolder. But since then it has had at least one car retire in every race except the Assen opener, and the score now reads 11 retirements for Audi; 13 for BMW. More telling is that Audi has retired a car just twice in the past seven races, showing improvement, while BMW has regressed.

The numbers game has been played down by Dittrich as the main cause for BMW taking a beating in the title race, but this doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

BMW's failure to lure a customer squad into the DTM for 2019 - although Autosport understands signs are promising that Motopark will fill the void in 2020 - means it has had a car imbalance of six entries compared to Audi's eight. In a series as political and tactical as the DTM, that's like BMW heading into a chess match with a few pieces already missing.

But the DTM's rules largely militate against Audi's numerical advantage translating into more points, with only a marque's top four finishers in a race allowed to score in the manufacturers' stakes.

Speaking moments after Audi won the manufacturers' title, Dittrich told Autosport: "Without having analysed it in detail, one or two things that pop in my mind straight away are Audi having more cars, which statistically improves your chances of having more cars in the points.

For BMW, there's been no balance. Timo Glock and Joel Eriksson have taken the brunt of reliability problems and Glock, in particular, hasn't recovered from a promising start that preceded his misfortune

"On top of it, with eight cars you can position them to help you out and I think from the theory that really makes a significant impact. What the reality was [as to what] made the difference, I'd need to analyse and not answer off the top of my head now."

The analysis would show that the extra two cars from WRT Audi made virtually no difference. Yes, Pietro Fittipaldi and Jonathan Aberdein have shown blistering one-lap pace on occasion to score a point or two for Audi in qualifying, but the pairing have been inconsistent, low-point scorers throughout. WRT has contributed just 19 points to the manufacturers' title race. In other words, remove WRT's efforts and the score would be 851 to 482 in Audi's favour.

The benefit of the doubt has to be given to BMW's argument in terms of how Audi deploys its RS5 DTM against its rival, particularly as Wittmann has often had to work his way through the field after reliability problems and has encountered Audi roadblocks as a consequence of its often impressive qualifying efforts. Aside from the obvious impact of running in dirty air and losing time, measuring the points Wittmann has lost in those situations is an impossible task.

But it does lead into the argument made by Audi motorsport chief Dieter Gass as to how his manufacturer outclassed its rival this year. Gass believes it is the validation of his faith in the Audi line-up.

The decision to retain Jamie Green and Loic Duval for this year raised a few eyebrows considering the pair were rock bottom of the 2018 driver standings, but Audi kept the faith, convinced that Green had made a turnaround in the second half of the year and that Duval was closing in on a breakthrough. Both have exceeded their 2018 points totals, taking three podiums between them and contributing more effectively.

"We didn't change our line-up between this year and last, because I was convinced of performances [improving]," Gass told Autosport. "Loic this year has been very strong, he wasn't last year, and he has won Super GT championships, so he's shown he can perform and this season he is showing it clearly.

"Jamie as well, we don't need to talk about Jamie's performances [last year]. We have seen it [problems] so many times, and I am happy to see him back [in contention]."

For BMW, there's been no balance. Timo Glock and Joel Eriksson have taken the brunt of reliability problems and Glock, in particular, hasn't recovered from a promising start that preceded his misfortune.

Sheldon van der Linde is a rookie still coming to terms with the DTM, although he has been strong in qualifying. That's left the lion's share of work to Wittmann and Eng, with Spengler performing when he and his team can get their heads around the set-up.

Dittrich has refuted suggestions that the car is difficult to set-up because "they're not the same for every track obviously, so you can't say this set-up works for one, so you have a set-up for every track and you have to evolve and elaborate it weekend by weekend".

With that in mind, Gass reckons "if we look at the overall situation, there are two possibilities. One, we have a more balanced line-up or the [Audi] car is easier to drive and better in terms of getting the maximum out of it".

Canvassing the paddock to find the on-track strengths and weaknesses of the RS5 and M4 DTM cars has proven difficult, with a variety of observations put to Autosport. Some Audi drivers have spoken of the BMW being easy on its tyres, being strong under braking, having class-leading traction, and going backwards in qualifying trim as it improved its race form.

BMW drivers are virtually united in their view as to why Audi is ahead of the BMW, convinced the Four Rings has an engine advantage - Wittmann, in particular, is keen to point out speedtraps as evidence. That's usually a weak form of evidence, but at the high-speed tracks it has been clear that Audi is far quicker in a straight line.

Only BMW will know exactly why it lags behind Audi but, as its 2019 season looks set to go out on a whimper, and not just in the DTM, it now has to fight to turn itself around for the next campaign - starting this weekend at the Nurburgring.