New Audi A4 DTM dominates in racing début

With a commanding 1-2-3 victory at the Hockenheim DTM season opener Audi, yet again, underpinned the brand’s slogan "Vorsprung durch Technik", not only on the road but on the circuit. 93,000 spectators (throughout the weekend) witnessed an impressive premiere showing of the new Audi A4 DTM, which outperformed the competition in its racing début, clinching positions one, two, three and five.

The fourth-generation Audi A4 DTM features leading-edge technology with numerous innovative details, particularly in the area of aerodynamics. Using advanced CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) calculations, the engineers intensively worked on the airflow around and through the vehicle. In addition, the technology specialists at Audi Sport managed to lower the vehicle’s centre of gravity and achieved a further reduction of the car’s dry weight. With the four-litre V8 engine that delivers approximately 460 hp, the engineers found further development potential as well.

At the season opener at Hockenheim the new Audi A4 DTM was the quickest car straight from the start. In the race the Audi drivers impressively demonstrated that their new "company" car is not only competitive throughout a lap but delivers consistently fast lap times along with immediate reliability. On average, race winner Mattias Ekström beat the best Mercedes by over half a second per lap – a margin of mammoth proportions in the DTM.

At Hockenheim, the race was crucially determined as early as at the start: Mattias Ekström managed to take off a bit quicker than his team colleague Timo Scheider, who had started from the pole position. The Swede had to briefly relinquish his lead only during the two mandatory pit stops. His eleventh victory in the DTM now makes Ekström the most successful Audi DTM driver of all time.

Timo Scheider followed Mattias Ekström over the entire race distance like a shadow and saw the chequered flag in second place merely 0.824 seconds behind the title defender. By finishing as the runner-up, Scheider repeated his best DTM result so far, achieved in the 2007 season finale.

Tom Kristensen, who had started from position five on the grid, finished third to complete Audi’s total triumph. The Dane benefited from perfect pit stops and a good strategy of Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline, which caused him to move in front of the two Mercedes cars driven by Bruno Spengler and Paul di Resta. Impressive, as well, was Martin Tomczyk’s fight to make up ground. Tomczyk had dropped to ninth place at the start, but managed to improve to fifth. Shortly before race end, he even caught up with Bruno Spengler.

Solid performances were also shown by the drivers of the 2007-spec A4 cars: Oliver Jarvis, Mike Rockenfeller, Alexandre Prémat and Markus Winkelhock captured places nine to twelfth, respectively. Finishing the very first DTM race in his career in ninth place, the 24-year-old Brit Oliver Jarvis barely missed scoring a point. Jarvis clearly won the duel between the DTM newcomers against former Formula 1 star Ralf Schumacher.

Katherine Legge finished her first DTM race as well. Her team-mate Christijan Albers retired after a collision with Ralf Schumacher in the early stages of the race.

The Audi squad will not have a lot of time to celebrate its triumph at Hockenheim: as early as next weekend, the second 2008 DTM round is on the agenda at Ochersleben – a circuit on which Audi has traditionally been very strong.