Gary Paffett scoops TouringCarTimes award
Gary Paffett has been voted the best driver of the 2009 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters by readers of the TouringCarTimes.com. Paffett, the 2005 series champion, enjoyed a strong season in which he claimed five race victories.
The Briton eventually saw the title go the way of Audi’s Timo Scheider, but his performances did not go unnoticed by the readers of TouringCarTimes.
Paffett claimed the Best Driver award with some 35% of the votes, compared to 27% for Scheider. Jamie Green was voted third, but someway behind the top two.
The battle for both the Best Privateer and the Best Rookie award were fought out between the three Kolles Audi drivers; Christian Bakkerud, Johannes Seidlitz and Tomáš Kostka.
The Best Privateer award went to Christian Bakkerud, who took 56% of the vote compared to Kostka with 37%.
Bakkerud enjoyed a consistent year in the the 2007 specification Audi A4, finishing all but two of the races he started. These performances led to him also being voted as the Best Rookie, with very similar figures to that of the privateer vote.
Driver’s aside, the Manufacturers and Teams get the chance to claim awards based on voting by the readers of the TouringCarTimes.
The 2009 DTM season witnessed an intense and hard fought battle between the two manufacturers Audi and Mercedes-Benz.
Despite Mercedes claiming the most race victories during the season, Audi often dominated proceedings when they did win, claiming a whitewash of the podium positions on a number of occasions throughout.
The readers of TouringCarTimes clearly saw this as cause to vote heavily in Audi’s favour, with a whopping 65% of votes going their way.
The final award in the DTM for 2009 is the Best Team award. The statistics of the season show how close the teams were through the season, but the fan voting showed a clear favourite.
The Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline claimed 64% of the vote, with HWA-AMG Mercedes a distant second with a mere 19%.
Abt Sportsline fielded a strong driver line-up, with multiple Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen, double DTM series champion Mattias Ekström, Martin Tomczyk and eventual title winner Timo Scheider, all in 2009-specification cars.
As we all look forward to the start of the 2010 season, we would like to thank everyone who follows the DTM at TouringCarTimes.com and made their feelings known by voting in the 2009 awards.
