A perfect strategy, two ideal pit stops and a flawless race. At the Circuit de Catalunya, this was the base for Audi driver Timo Scheider for a big step towards his title defence. After 59 laps and a total of 175.643 kilometres, the reigning DTM champion from Germany scored a dominant victory in the eight DTM round of the season.
His two fellow Audi drivers Tom Kristensen from Denmark and German Martin Tomczyk completed Audi’s winning trio on the podium. “I had a rocket start. I think that it would be nice when you could plan something like this.
But today, it was largely luck and good work by my team. A margin of twelve points in the championship sounds very good. Now, we can take on the two remaining races in a relaxed way”, said the joyful winner about his fifth career victory in the DTM and his second win of the season.
With ten points for first place and a total of 53 points, the 30-year old remains in the lead of the points’ standings.
His main rivals are Swede Mattias Ekström (Audi) at 41 points, who ended up fifth in the Spanish DTM round behind Bruno Spengler (Mercedes-Benz), and Mercedes-Benz driver Gary Paffett at 39 points.
The Briton was the best-placed driver with an AMG Mercedes C-Class by finishing fourth. “Of course, I am disappointed. We want to be in contention for the top positions and we wanted to beat Audi. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, we just didn’t have the necessary speed. In qualifying, we had the same speed as Audi. But today, it wasn’t enough - for whatever reason. Probably, fourth place was all we could achieve”, said Paffett about his result.
The eighth round of the most popular international touring car series started with a tactical masterpiece by Audi. Both Kristensen, who started from pole position, and Tomczyk, who was standing right behind the Dane in third place, moved over to the right side of the track at the start and thus made way for Scheider, who, in fifth place, was also starting from the left grid row. The eventual winner took the lead coming out of the second corner and wasn’t to lose it anymore until the end of the race.
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