Hot season finale at Hockenheim

Hockenheim. The days are getting shorter and the temperatures are falling – but before Germany is fully seized by the autumn, DTM will provide the motor-racing enthusiasts another hot weekend (17th to 19th October). Some five months after the season kick-off at the same venue, the most popular international touring-car series now is going to contest its season finale at Hockenheim.

The first race of the 2014 season was won by Marco Wittmann and this win represented the basis for the German’s first title triumph. Behind the BMW driver, there still are three drivers involved in a battle for second place in the championship. And in addition, BMW also wants to prevail in the manufacturers’ ranking.

We definitely have to score 22 points at least as we can’t catch up in the number-of-wins area,

Dieter Gass

A season finale always is something special: it’s the last possibility to deliver and achieve your goals. Afterwards, all those involved exit the season and have to live with the Hockenheim wins or defeats under their belts throughout the winter. “With a good race, a good result or maybe even a win, the off season is a far nicer period of time,” says Audi driver Timo Scheider. The Hockenheimring will be the venue of the decision in the fight for the vice-championship.

There still are 25 points to be awarded and thanks to his win at Zandvoort, Audi’s Mattias Ekström holds a 12-point lead over Mercedes driver Christian Vietoris. Meanwhile, Edoardo Mortara also still may hope for finishing second in the championship – the Audi driver’s gap to his team-mate Ekström amounts to 13 points. The battle between BMW and Audi for the manufacturers’ title also is far from being over.

BMW holds a 21-point lead and consequently, they are in a promising position to add a third triumph to the drivers’ and team titles already won. “We had pour slight problems when it came to the constancy, this year,” admits BMW ace Timo Glock. “Usually, only one of our cars made it to the top positions.

This weekend, however, it must be our goal to get as many cars to the points as possible.” It goes without saying that the Audi camp is determined to prevent the BMW drivers from doing so. ‘We definitely have to score 22 points at least as we can’t catch up in the number-of-wins area,” says Dieter Gass, Audi Sport’s head of DTM. “This will be a difficult task for us – but realising it isn’t impossible.”

As the season finale is held at the same venue as the kick-off, manufacturers and teams now will find out how they improved over the course of the season. For BMW, the 2014 season was the first they contested with the all new BMW M4. “It will be interesting to see the progress we made,” says Augusto Farfus. “After all, we used every minute for keeping on enhancing the M4 during the season.”

At Zandvoort, Christian Vietoris was the first Mercedes-Benz driver to race the new spec of the C-Coupé and now, at Hockenheim, all the Mercedes-Benz drivers will be provided with latest spec of the car. “Following all these restructurings, we hopefully are on a good way, now,” hopes Paul Di Resta. “We could make it to the points but first of all, we want to again become a factor in the battle for the championship, next year.”

DTM