Sheldon van der Linde is the new 2022 DT champion! South Africa-born racing driver clinched the DTM title earlier today at the Hockenheimring. The new DTM champion finished third aboard the BMW M4 GT3 and scored enough points to finish ahead of Lucas Auer in his Mercedes-AMG GT3. Audi driver, and future BMW Motorsport factory driver Rene Rast finished third in the championship. It was actually Marco Wittmann in the BMW M4 GT3 who took first place today at the Hockenheimring ahead of Rene Rast in the Audi R8 LMS GT3. Rast needed a win today.
First DTM Championship for the BMW M4 GT3
The start of the race was equally exciting. Witmann charged ahead of Rast (who started on pole), from fourth to first place. Van der Linde didn’t have a great start and dropped to sixth place in his Schubert BMW M4 GT3. But he quickly overtook Audi’s Marius Zug and Dev Gore. After a six years drought, the last DTM championship was won by Witmann, BMW Motorsport returns to the top of the DTM standings.
Van der Linde delivered great performance in Saturday’s race, enough to give his team Schubert Motorsport the necessary points to clinch the team championship title for the 2022 season. After a hard fought race, in which van der Linde came back from a 16th place start—thanks to a rule infraction from his team—he was able to finish in second. Alongside champion driver Sheldon van der Linde, Philipp Eng also scored over 60 points for Schubert Motorsport.
A couple of weeks ago, we were in Austria, interviewing DTM driver Sheldon van der Linde, after his race at the Red Bull Ring. You can catch his thoughts on the DTM racing and much more in the video below. The 2022 DTM champion Sheldon van Linde and the Hockenheim winner Marco Wittmann were also confirmed yesterday as factory drivers in the BMW M Hybrid V8. Both drivers will head to the Daytona 24 Hours in January 2023.
