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After a tough DTM season, ABT Sportsline has two reasons to celebrate: the team from Kempten secured third place in the drivers’ and teams’ championships at the finale at Hockenheim.
ABT driver Ricardo Feller also scored points on both days of the final weekend with fourth and ninth places. Alongside the new DTM Champion Thomas Preining in a Porsche, the young Swiss is the only driver to have scored points in all 16 races in 2023.
Team-mate Kelvin van der Linde contributed important points to third place in the team standings finishing sixth on Saturday. On Sunday, the South African had to make a second pit stop due to a puncture. This dashed his hopes of moving up to fifth place in the final drivers’ standings.
Although the Audi R8 LMS cars were too slow on the straights at the Hockenheimring, the two ABT drivers once again thrilled the many fans on site in both races with spectacular fights and overtaking manoeuvres.
With third places in the drivers’ and teams’ championships, two wins, five podiums and two pole positions, ABT Sportsline was by far the most successful Audi team in the 2023 DTM. With Swiss Ricardo Feller, at least one ABT driver finished in the top 3 of the drivers’ championship for the 17th time in 24 years and for the fifth time in a row.
“The whole team can be proud to have lifted a trophy in both championships,” said ABT Motorsport Director Martin Tomczyk. “Congratulations to Ricardo on finishing third in the drivers’ championship. To score points in all the races not only speaks for him, but also for the work of his crew. Unfortunately, Kelvin has had extremely bad luck this year – again today. Even though we had expected a bit more, it was a great DTM finale with a nice crowd. Seeing so many fans was great and shows how popular the DTM is. It was also nice that around 100 ABT Sportsline employees came to Hockenheim on Saturday and kept their fingers crossed for us. And last but not least, congratulations to Thomas Preining and the Manthey team. This performance deserves respect, but next year we want to make it harder for them. Our complete package for 2024 is already in place and Red Bull will definitely give us wings.”
“I’m very happy with how the season went,” says Ricardo Feller. “Of course we would have liked to clinch the title, but we weren’t able to do that this year. I’m still super happy for the whole squad – third place in the team and driver standings gives us a tailwind. As our commitment for 2024 is already in place, we can prepare ourselves optimally in the winter and strike back next year.”
“It was a season ending with ups and downs,” says Kelvin van der Linde. “My second half of the season was better than the first – we can build on that. I am sure we will come back even stronger in 2024. I also say thank you to everyone in the team for the support this year.”
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