Audi arrives at Brands Hatch with an advantage

At Brands Hatch, the 2009 DTM begins its final spurt. Just four more races are left to show whether Audi will have achieved its big aim of the season: The brand with the four rings aims to be the first automobile manufacturer in the DTM, which has been held since 1984, to win the champion’s title for a third consecutive year.

With its commanding triumphs at Oschersleben (places one to three) and at the Nürburgring (places one to four), Audi took a major step toward successfully defending the title. Two Audi drivers – Timo Scheider (Germany) and Mattias Ekström (Sweden) – occupy the top two positions in the standings with just a one-point gap between them. Gary Paffett in third place is trailing them with a six-point gap as the best Mercedes driver.

Yet everyone at Audi knows how quickly the tables can turn in the DTM – even after the technology has been frozen at the level of the Nürburgring race and the resulting stop of development. Consequently, Audi Sport has left nothing to chance before the Brands Hatch round and tested set-up variants at the EuroSpeedway with Tom Kristensen and Martin Tomczyk. Now, more than ever, every detail – no matter how small – counts in the DTM.

This particularly applies to the “Indy” circuit at Brands Hatch, which – with a mere length of 1.929 kilometers – is the shortest DTM race track. Last year, the times posted by the top ten in qualifying were within half a second. Just 90 thousandths of a second decided the duel for the pole position in favour of Audi driver Timo Scheider.

Scheider showed an impressive performance back then in the race as well when he kept Paul di Resta’s Mercedes at bay throughout the entire 82 laps and celebrated his second victory at a DTM race.

But not only Scheider has fond memories of Brands Hatch: Mattias Ekström won in 2006 at the DTM’s debut event and was third on the podium in both 2007 and 2008. Martin Tomczyk in 2007 just barely missed victory. And Tom Kristensen dominated the race in 2006 before retiring due to a technical defect shortly before race end.

This season, as many as three drivers of a current Audi A4 DTM – Tom Kristensen, Timo Scheider and Martin Tomczyk – have won a race. Only Mattias Ekström is still lacking a win. Instead, the Swede is the only DTM driver to have scored points at all six races and mounted the podium on as many as five occasions.

Due to the time difference between the United Kingdom and Germany both qualifying and the race will take place one hour earlier than usual. For TV viewers in Germany, this means that the live broadcasts on “Das Erste” will start at the usual times: at 1:25 pm (local time) on Saturday and at 1:45 pm on Sunday.