BMW Espana Motorsport earns GT Winter Series and BMW M2 Cup Vice-Champions honours 15.03.2022: BMW Group España’s official racing team finished Vice-Champion on its racing debut. Both BMW España Motorsport drivers, José Manuel De los Milagros and Nerea Martí, were forced to deal with a rainy Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and were pleased with GT W

BMW Group España’s official racing team finished Vice-Champion on its racing debut. Both BMW España Motorsport drivers, José Manuel De los Milagros and Nerea Martí, were forced to deal with a rainy Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and were pleased with GT Winter Series and BMW M2 CS Racing Winter Series Cup Vice-Championships


 
BMW España Motorsport was on the brink of GT Winter Series and BMW M2 CS Racing Winter Series Cup titles until the very last second. Such a milestone considering the BMW Group España’s official racing team was its official racing debut.



Nerea Martí and José Manuel De los Milagros kept fighting for title honours throughout the weekend but finally a demanding rainy weekend made that the BMW España Motorsport’s entered BMW M2 CS Racing finished second in the standings, which is an extra motivation for the season ahead.



Rain-marred free practice sessions on Saturday served to make useful set-up tweaks and BMW España Motorsport gathered valuable data for Sunday, as they were completely new weather conditions. Sunday saw lighter rainy conditions and, besides, fog delayed and shortened both qualifying sessions.



Just like both BMW España Motorsport drivers later explained, “we expected to change tyre pressure depending on how much wet the track was. But with just a 10-minute qualifying sessions, we couldn’t change it and struggled to take the most out from the tyres”. As a result, Martí and De los Milagros were second-fastest in their respective qualifying sessions.



Martí had a first battle against Marcel Marchewicz in Race 1 under heavy rain conditions. After a 10-minute long safety car period, green flags were waved again and Martí brought her BMW home in second place. In race 2, De los Milagros had a second shot against Marchewicz – who drove in both races – but as track conditions rapidly improved due to the rain suddenly stopped, BMW España Motorsport was forced to switch to slick tyres but still running wet set-up.


De los Milagros remained in win contention but in the later stages he started to struggle due to high tyre pressures and his race pace dropped to still take the chequered flag in second place. In the endurance-format race, Martí had opening stint duties and ran in second place before making the mandatory pit stop and handed the BMW M2 CS Racing to De los Milagros.




Unfortunately, a safety car was deployed shortly after and the Spanish duo was put a lap down. De los Milagros’ recovery drive still rewarded them with a third place in class, which wasn’t enough to clinch the titles.



“We were almost crowned both overall and BMW M2 CS Racing Winter Series Cup champions. We managed to be pretty competitive from the beginning thanks to the whole team’s faultless work. Finally our experience wasn’t that good in the wet and we couldn’t bring the titles home.



But we need to keep learning and improving. At last, it was a short of preseason for us as our real goal is the Spanish Endurance Championship”, both BMW España Motorsport drivers explained and underlining that “the BMW M2 CS Racing car proved to be the machinery to beat as, until the very last event in Barcelona, two of these cars were leading both GT Winter Series and BMW M2 CS Racing class.



From our point of view, we are proud to help BMW M to defeat other top brands such Porsche, Mercedes, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Audi or KTM.”
 






CTR Press photos Carlos Frutos (Overs)