
DTM: Title in a rush
With a 1-2-3 victory at the Nürburgring, Audi has already secured the DTM manufacturers’ championship with six races still to go before the end of the season. The teams’ title in the last DTM season with Class 1 cars will also go to the brand with the four rings.

“Robin Good” wins again
Second victory in a row: following his success on the Grand Prix circuit, Robin Frijns also won the first of the two DTM races on the Nürburgring’s sprint circuit. The “Flying Dutchman” clinched an extremely rare lights-to-flag victory in the DTM, even though his lead was wiped out three times by the safety car. “It was pretty nerve-racking,” said Frijns after his narrow victory. “Every time I had built up a lead, the safety car came out. When René was directly behind me for the final laps and was able to use Push-to-Pass and DRS all the time, I knew that I couldn’t afford the slightest mistake.”
René Rast had secured pole position with an impressive lap in the morning. “The start was decisive,” confirmed the two-time DTM champion. “On Friday, we had a technical problem in the first free practice session and even after the second practice session I was unable to practice a start. Is was my first real start and it was not a good one.” At times, Rast even dropped back to third place, but then recovered his second place at the last restart and then started chasing the leader in the final stages of the race. “I didn’t want to overtake Robin before the last lap, but maybe I attacked a little bit too late,” said Rast. His slow start also had an indirect effect on championship leader Nico Müller. “I was stuck behind René, who seemed to have zero grip, so two BMWs overtook me in the first few corners,” said the Swiss. After the first restart, it got even worse for him: “I was squeezed between two cars, was hit from behind and got turned around.” From last place, Müller fought his way up to fifth with an early pit stop and by far the fastest lap of the race.

Frijns on pole
The twelfth race of the season on Sunday was dominated by the three title contenders: Nico Müller, Robin Frijns and René Rast. Frijns managed a perfect lap in qualifying. In the race, however, the winner of Saturday’s race was only able to hold on to his teammate Nico Müller for six laps. “Nico was simply a bit faster. It wouldn’t have made any sense for me to fight with him. Sometimes, it’s smarter to bring home a second place. This was the maximum I could achieve today.”

Dominant win for Müller
Nico Müller made up one place at the start and used DRS and Push-to-Pass on lap seven to overtake his teammate. Afterwards, he continued to pull away at the front. At the finish, the Swiss had an 11.790-second lead over Robin Frijns and 19.526 seconds over René Rast.
“This victory was very important,” said Müller after his fifth win of the season. “I had a lot of bad luck on the last two race days. To come back in this way feels good. I’m especially happy for the whole team, who worked until the early hours of the morning to prepare a perfect car for me again.”

“Strong Audi performance”
Before the last six races, Nico Müller leads the drivers’ championship with 242 points ahead of Robin Frijns (224) and René Rast (195). In the teams’ classification, Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline is clearly in first place. The score between Audi and BMW in the manufacturers’ championship is 827:356 on points and 10:2 on wins.
“We’ve again seen a very strong Audi performance,” said Head of Audi Motorsport Dieter Gass. “Nico had some bad luck in the last two races. That he has been able to come back like this is fantastic, and I’m happy for him. It’s also great that we secured two of the three championship titles so early on. We started to give our all again in the final year with the Audi RS 5 DTM. The results speak for themselves. That is pure ‘Vorsprung durch Technik.’”
DTM Nürburgring, results documents to download
Race 1
1 page, EN
272.2 KB
Race 2
1 page, EN
268.7 KB
Standings
4 pages, EN
644.9 KB
Nürburgring



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