Bruno Spengler waved goodbye to Mercedes at the last round at Hockenheim - Photo Credit: DTM.com
BMW have confirmed that Bruno Spengler will drive for the marque in its DTM return season in 2012, bringing months of speculation to an end.
The French-Canadian makes the switch from Mercedes, who he had driven for since his DTM debut in 2005. From 74 starts he took nine wins, 11 pole positions and 12 fastest laps. He finished runner-up in both the 2006 and 2007 seasons, but never won the title for the three-pointed star.
In 2010 he led the standings going into the season finale in Shanghai, but ended up third after a disastrous weekend in China. A strong first half to 2011 also saw him lead the standings, but a poor run of form allowed Martin Tomczyk to win the title and Spengler again slipped to third by the season's end.
“In recent weeks we have not only been developing the BMW M3 DTM, but have also been working on the driver line-up for our return to the DTM,” said BMW Motorsport Director Jens Marquardt.
“Outside our current line-up, Bruno Spengler was one of our top choices. Despite his youth he has a lot of DTM experience, which will greatly assist us during our development phase and on race weekends. For this reason, we did not hesitate when the opportunity to sign Bruno up arose. We have yet to decide which of our three teams he will drive for. That will be announced at a later stage.”
Spengler joins existing BMW factory drivers and ex-World Touring Car Championship pilots Andy Priaulx and Augusto Farfus as being confirmed in BMW's roster for 2012.
