Maxime Martin: The Patriotism in Racing for BMW

In May 7th, the new season of DTM will begin in Hockenheim. Veteran drivers Marco Wittmann (DE), Bruno Spengler (CA), Timo Glock (DE), António Félix da Costa (PT), Tom Blomqvist (GB), Augusto Farfus (BR), Martin Tomczyk (DE) and Maxime Martin (BE) will be driving the eight BMW Motorsport M4 DTM cars. While waiting for the race to commence, BMW will be publishing interviews with the drivers. For this week, Maxime Martin is on the spotlight. He will be racing under the BMW Team RBM, driving the #36 SAMSUNG BMW M4 DTM, in Belgium.

Belguim is Maxime’s home country and he feels very privileged to be racing here. And as early as now, he is already feeling a sense of patriotism in being in a Belgian team. In the past 2 years, he has seen nothing but successes racing for BMW. He has won a pole position each year, 7th place overall two times, and was also awarded as Rookie of the year. For this DTM season, he feels more burden in performing well for his country and he feels that the team will be able to achieve this together.

Martin believes that he will need to adjust well to driving in DTM. Regarding adjusting to the DTM from the GT, he says that this requires a lot of effort. It is completely different in terms of atmosphere and driving styes required by the cars. Unfortunately, they were only given two days of testing and he wishes they had more. However, Martin believes that the team can still do very well and that they will only know the real chances in the first qualifying. As back to back 7th place in the DTM for two seasons, Martin’s goal is to do better than that. He wants to beat his own personal record.

He also shared his thoughts about team-mate Tom Blomqvist. Though he is younger than Martin, he considers him as a very good driver and he feels honored to be working with Blomqvist, especially since they get together really well.