Sheldon van der Linde won his first DTM championship with a third place finish at the season finale at the Hockenheimring.
While his title rival Rene Rast finished second, it wasn’t enough to overhaul the South African’s points lead going into the final race. The eventual runner-up, Lucas Auer, finished seventh, and ended up 11 points behind S. van der Linde.
Marco Wittmann, the 2014 and 2016 DTM champion, won his first race of the season, but wasn’t in championship contention. Rast started on pole but lost the lead at the start to Wittmann, who started third, and the order stayed like that all through the race.
S. van der Linde started fifth but climbed up the order to finish third, behind Rast.
In fourth was 19-year-old Marius Zug. He scored only his first points of the season yesterday and came close to a first podium today.
The new champion’s brother, Kelvin van der Linde, finished fifth. Nico Muller finished sixth, with Auer seventh.
Leon Kohler finished eighth, with Luca Stolz ninth and Ricardo Feller rounding out the top 10.
