Martin Tomczyk is maiden DTM champion on Hankook tyres

Martin Tomczyk is the new DTM champion. In Sunday’s penultimate season round at Valencia, the Audi driver wrapped up the title by finishing third and prior to the finale at Hockenheim, he is now beyond reach with an advantage of 13 points. His main rival Bruno Spengler (Mercedes-Benz) only scored two points by finishing seventh and now has to defend his current second position in the drivers’ standings at Hockenheim. With his third race win of the season, Mattias Ekström (Audi) came within two points from the Canadian.

Like in the previous round at Oschersleben, there was no way to stop the Swede at the 4.005 kilometres long track at Valencia, where he drove a dominant lights-to-flag victory home. After 45 laps, Portuguese Filipe Albuquerque took the chequered flag in second place and celebrated his maiden DTM podium finish. However, the focus was on the duel between points’ leader Martin Tomczyk and his fiercest rival Bruno Spengler. While the Audi driver moved up right away from eleventh place on the grid to sixth at the start of the race, Spengler was hardly able to make up any positions from his 12th grid position. When Tomczyk overtook two times’ DTM champion and fellow Audi driver Timo Scheider after the latter’s pit stop on lap 30 and claimed third place, the battle for the championship was decided.

Martin Tomczyk commented: “It was not just a fantastic race, but also a fantastic 2011 season for me, together with my Audi Sport Team Phoenix and with team principal Ernst Moser. This year, the factors for success were quite easy: everything just had to fit together. That always requires the team, the driver and the car. And on top of that a consistent and quick tyre that harmonises with the car and works well. We definitely had that this year. This year, we have never had a tyre problem and we have always been able to work very well with the Hankook tyres.”