DTM

Record Breaking Year for Audi in the DTM

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Credit: Audi Communications Motorsport / Michael Kunkel

Audi set themselves apart from the rest in the 2019 DTM Series as they set record after record on their course to all three titles.

Heading into 2019 was an unknown for the teams with the switch to four-cylinder turbo engines, yet it was the most efficient and powerful engine of the brand’s DTM history.

Audi was the only manufacturer to not exceed the allocated number of engines per car – one and a half – and therefore did not suffer any points deductions. At the end of the season, WRT driver Pietro Fittipaldi‘s engine had the highest mileage of over 5,000 kilometers.

The team’s advantage over BMW and R-Motorsport Aston Martin meant they sealed all three titles before the end of the season to claim their third triple win after 2004 and 2017.

On three occasions, the team netted maximum points for the manufacturers’ classification on route to their record breaking manufacturers haul. They became the first brand to score more than 1,000 points with a total of 1,132 and a staggering 582 point advantage over next closest rival BMW.

Twelve victories. Twelve pole positions. Twelve fastest laps. Forty out of a possible fifty-four podium finishes and all three championships the brand achieved the most successful season in their history.

Only once did an Audi not start from the front row in the eighteen races that made up the championship.

At Brands Hatch, Sunday’s race got underway with all eight Audi drivers in the top eight spots. This has only been done once before. By Audi. Back in 2016 at the Hungaroring.

In Sunday’s outing at the Nürburgring they celebrated a seven-fold success in the race to match the previous record set by BMW at Zandvoort in 2015.

The finale at Hockenheim saw the Audi RS5 DTM, which has been fielded since 2013, take its fiftieth and fifty-first wins, to make it the most successful car since the DTM was revived in 2000.

Champion René Rast set a number of records of his own on the way to his second DTM title.

With a seventy-two point advantage over closest rival Nico Müller, the German claimed the championship with the biggest advantage in the series history.

As well he is the first driver to have secured the title twice in his first three years of the DTM. Of the points he scored, thirty-five of them came just in qualifying as he started from the front row on thirteen occasions with seven of them being from pole position.

In the process he broke the record set by Nicola Larini in 1993 when he started from the front row twelve times.

Despite what he has achieve Rast, has only contested in fifty-nine DTM races in his career with a staggering 760 points to his name – equating to an average of twelve points a race.

In the teams’ championship Audi Sport Team Rosberg, Abt Sportsline and Phoenix claimed the top three spots – three teams from the same manufacturer have not achieved this since 2001.

Audi Sport Team Phoenix were also awarded the best pit stop award for the fourth time.

Going forward, the DTM is continuing to look for ways to reduce the carbon footprint of the series. At the finale in Hockenheim, the Audi race taxis used an innovative fuel that results in a thirty percent improvement of the carbon output.

The season is not quite over yet as the DTM will head over to Fuji at the end of November to race alongside the Super GT championship.

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An NCTJ accredited Journalism Graduate covering DTM and the FIA Formula 3 Championship.
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