René Rast on the title fight: “Anything can happen!”

Audi Sport had plenty of reasons to celebrate at the Red Bull Ring. René Rast not only scored his and the manufacturer’s fifth win of the season and fourth in a row, it was the 100th for the Ingolstadt-based squad in the DTM that seriously put Rast in the contention for the drivers’ title.

A fate that seemed impossible in the first half of the season with the RS 5 DTMs reportedly losing the most performance with the new aero package for this season, but that is looking increasingly more possible as the season nears its end.

The turning point for Audi was Rast’s first victory at the mid-point at Zandvoort. “From now on, we will focus on René,” Audi Motorsport boss Dieter Gass then told TouringCarTimes. And what looked like an attempt to rescue a faltering season has become a full fledged challenge for the title.

Nico Müller qualified on the front row for the second race, with Rast a distant eighth. In the race, the Swiss challenged Mercedes-AMG’s Gary Paffett for the lead. As Rast recovered through the pack and reached Müller, the Team Abt Sportline driver played the team game to escort the reigning champion towards his fourth consecutive win of the season.

“The duel was a lot of fun and my car was also fantastic today,” said Müller. “That I didn’t put up very much of a fight against René is logical when you look at the standings. Audi clinched four of the possible six podium places including both victories here. That’s simply fantastic.”

Rast becomes the fourth driver in DTM history to win four back-to-back races with series legends Klaus Ludwig, Nicola Larini and Alessandro Nannini. Rast is also the only driver to have achieved so since the inception of the new DTM in 2000.

“It was an incredible weekend,” said Rast. “I started from P8 and the key to this was the pit stop, a great stop, to undercut Gary (Paffett) and Paul (di Resta). I also had a good start, so I had a lot of very, very positive moments in this race. The car and the pace were very good in the end.”

But more importantly, Rast has brought himself to a just 30 points behind championship leader di Resta, bringing himself into contention for the title: “It’s just an amazing feeling. We keep the fight open until Hockenheim and hopefully we can repeat the same in there, two victories, would be nice, let’s see.

“Anything can happen. Last year I closed over 30 points to Mattias (Ekström) and now we have two races left and anything is possible,” concluded the reigning champion.

“Before the event, we definitely didn’t expect to score our 100th victory here at Spielberg,” said Gass. “This is simply incredible. After qualifying, we didn’t think we could win. We were hoping for Nico (Müller) to somehow manage to get in front of the Mercedes-Benz cars, and he did. René had a fantastic start. He put himself in a good position and subsequently drove an excellent race. The timing of the pit stop was perfect, too. Now we’re looking forward to Hockenheim.”