BMW Team RMG clinches the DTM team title
DTM champion Marco Wittmann added to his already unassailable points lead with a second place finish at Zandvoort in his Team RMG M4. Team Schnitzer’s Martin Tomczyk finished second, and Wittmann’s teammate Maxime Martin finished sixth. The finishes of Wittmann and Martin secured the DTM team championship for Stefan Reinhold’s Team RMG, and Martin’s finish guaranteed him the rookie of the year title that his teammate Wittmann had won last year.
The race went to Audi’s Matthias Ekstrom; it was the first win of the season for Audi. Ekstrom started on prime tires, and switched to the quicker options just before the third of the race’s four safety periods. Wittmann and Tomczyk, who had both started on options and switched to prime tires, could not catch Ekstrom at the end.
Team RBM’s Joey Hand finished just out of the points in eleventh, while Team MTEK’s Timo Glock and Antonio Felix da Costa finished thirteenth and fourteenth. Bruno Spengler finished eighth on the track in his Team Schnitzer M4 DTM, but was penalized for a collision and classified seventeenth at the end of the race. Hand’s teammate Augusto Farfus exited the race after he was hit by Mercedes’ Daniel Juncadella.
While BMW leads Audi in manufacturers’ points, the title chase will go down to the final race of the year at Hockenheim on October 19.—Brian S. Morgan
