Mortara wins final race of the season – Marco Wittmann is the 2016 DTM champion
Fourth place in the Sunday race of the DTM season finale at the Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg was enough for BMW driver Marco Wittmann to be crowned as the 2016 DTM champion. His only remaining opponent in the battle for the title, Edoardo Mortara with his Audi RS 5 DTM, showed another strong performance with a dominant win at Hockenheim on Sunday, but in spite of his eighth DTM career win, the Italo-Swiss ended up four points down on Wittmann as the new champion. For Marco Wittmann, it is already his second title in the DTM after 2014. BMW won the DTM drivers’ title for the fifth time after 1987, 1989, 2012 and 2014. “This was a turbulent race and Edoardo was very strong,” Wittmann summed up the action and praised his opponent. “Winning the title again after 2014 is an incredible feeling. It is simply fantastic.”
In the DTM finale at the Hockenheimring, the DTM showed itself from its best angle in front of 142,000 spectators during the weekend, with entertaining touring car racing and door-to-door duels as the ingredients for a worthy finale. Next to race winner Edoardo Mortara, the two Mercedes-AMG drivers Christian Vietoris and Paul Di Resta go into the winter break with podium finishes as they were classified second and third respectively.
Edoardo Mortara has done everything to still decide the battle for the title in his favour. Prior to the race, he was 17 points down. After a rather bad start, he battled against numerous BMW drivers and moved up one position after another, finally overtaking Wittmann for the lead on lap six. After 39 laps, Mortara crossed the finish line as the race winner, 3.040 seconds ahead of Vietoris. For Wittmann, fourth place in the final race of the season was enough to seal the title. Behind him, three further BMW drivers, Timo Glock, Maxime Martin and Tom Blomqvist, made it into the point-scoring positions. These were rounded out by Jamie Green and Robert Wickens in ninth and tenth place.
The battles for the teams’ and manufacturers’ titles also were decided in the final race. In the teams’ standings, the Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline came out on top with 319 points from BMW Team RMG (290 points). In the manufacturers’ standings, Audi clinched the title with 700 points from BMW (647 points) and Mercedes-Benz (471 points).
