Photo: Audi MediaCenter

Audi wants to retake the championship lead at Nürburgring

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The Nürburgring hosts the eighth round of the 2015 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters season this weekend. The Audi RS 5 DTM has been the strongest car so far this season, but the Ingolstadt manufacturer arrives to the Eifel track second in both the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ standings.

Audi Sport has largely dominated the season so far, having won seven of the 14 races that have taken place this year. However, the RS 5 DTM has been heavily hit by the implementation of the ‘performance weights’, a rule implemented to equalise the cars among themselves.

The poor results achieved in Oschersleben two weeks ago have, however, allowed Audi to travel to the next round being almost on the same weight as their main rivals, although BMW will still have a small advantage.

Mattias Ekström, fresh from participating at the World Rallycross event in Barcelona last weekend, is, for the first time this season, 2.5 kilos lighter than his main rival in the championship, Mercedes’ Pascal Wehrlein. The Swede hopes to turn around the 14-point deficit with the young German in the standings, with the fight remaining wide open: “At the Nürburgring, we’ll be competing on an equal footing.”

Edoardo Mortara and Jamie Green also trail Wehrlein by 30 and 33 points respectively, and it could be crunch time for them with regards to the championship fight. The Briton doesn’t throw the towel, having dominated the opening races of the season: “My RS 5 DTM is a winning car. I can hardly wait to be driving it with less weight again.”

Audi Sport is second in the Manufacturers’ standings, 66 points behind BMW and 5 ahead of Mercedes AMG. It will be important for the Ingolstadt squad to do well in Nürburgring, so they can keep their options open for the season finale in Hockenheim. Dieter Gass, Head of DTM at Audi, has a clear target for this weekend: “Obviously, we’d like to travel to the finale at Hockenheim in October as the front runners in both classifications. As we’re finally going to compete with comparable weights again at the Nürburgring the chance that we will do so definitely exists.”

The DTM on track action starts on Friday, with the First Free Practice session kicking off at 12:05 CEST (GMT + 2).