Wittmann Wins Finale; Van der Linde Crowned Champion

Marco Wittmann won the final DTM race of the season at Hockenheim, while Sheldon van der Linde came home in third to secure the drivers’ championship.

Wittmann’s No. 10 Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 took victory by a 4.425-second margin over the No. 33 Abt Sportsline Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Rene Rast.

Rast, driving his final race for Audi in DTM, started the race from pole with an outside shot at the title, but lost the lead on the opening lap as Wittmann swept by him into Turn 1.

The two drivers battled again after their mandatory pitstops, with Rast fighting his way past Wittmann at Turn 11 after a contact-heavy battle.

Rast then ran wide out of Turn 4 not much later, allowing Wittmann to retake the lead and would remain there to take his 18th victory in the series.

Sheldon van der Linde converted sixth on the grid to a third-placed finish with a controlling performance, securing the championship in the process.

It is the first DTM title for Van der Linde, who becomes the first South African DTM champion in the process.

His main challenger, Lucas Auer, started eleventh after a difficult qualifying session. The Austrian made strong progress in the opening exchanges, but ran out of steam in the second half of the race.

Needing to finish ahead of Van der Linde to win the championship, he instead seventh behind Marius Zug, Kelvin van der Linde and Nico Mueller.

Leon Koehler finished eighth, ahead of Luca Stolz. Ricardo Feller rounded out the top ten.

Sunday’s race featured a heavily depleted grid, with seven drivers absent as the result of yesterday’s incident-filled race while Felipe Fraga also not started.

In the end, twelve drivers out of nineteen that started finished. Maro Engel, Maximilian Buhk, Clemens Schmid, Philipp Eng, Mirko Bortolotti, Christian Engelhart and Maximilian Goetz all retired.

RESULTS: Race 2