Marco Wittmann in the #11 M4 DTM finished third in the Saturday race on the DTM series’ second consecutive weekend at the Nürburgring. On Sunday, BMW’s best finish was Sheldon van der Linde’s fourth overall. When the points were tallied for the weekend, Audi emerged as the winner of the manufacturers’ title for the season with three events remaining.
Five BMW racers scored points on Saturday; in addition to Wittmann in third, they were Philipp Eng in fourth, Jonathan Aberdein in sixth, van der Linde in eighth, and Timo Glock in tenth.
On Sunday, Wittmann in fifth, Glock in eighth, and Jonathan Aberdein in tenth scored points along with van der Linde.
Audi won both races, with Robin Frijns first on Saturday and drivers’ points leader Nico Müller first on Sunday. Audi, having won ten races over the course of the season to date to BMW’s two, has clinched the manufacturers’ championship six events into the nine-event season.
After Sunday’s race, Rudolf Dittrich, General Manager BMW Motorsport Vehicle Development, said, “Unfortunately, we did not quite manage to secure another podium today. We have to recognize that Nico Müller, Robin Frijns, and René Rast represent the benchmark this year. Nonetheless, Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann gave good performances in fourth and fifth positions. Congratulations to Nico Müller on the race win and to Audi on winning the manufacturers’ title. We will now concentrate on producing a few highlights over the course of the upcoming race weekends.”
DTM runs next on October 9–11 at Zolder in Belgium.
With Audi exiting the series next year, the future of DTM has been in doubt. Now ITR, DTM’s parent organization, has announced that the series will run enhanced GT3 cars next season; the specific modifications have not yet been specified. Both BMW and Audi have provided financial support to the series. That will end in 2021. Autosport’s story on the series’ new direction indicates that privateer teams will contest the series next year.—Brian Morgan
[Photo courtesy BMW Motorsport.]
