He shouted with emotion when crossing the finish line, completed doughnuts for joy in front of the grandstand, he got out of his car and was cheered on by the spectators – Pascal Wehrlein has used his first matchpoint in the final DTM season weekend at the Hockenheimring. Only a few minutes after finishing eighth in the race on Saturday, the Mercedes-Benz driver already had donned the victory t-shirt with the text ‘DTM Champion 2015’. “Just great! Simply just great! Now, the entire pressure is gone, a fantastic feeling,” the youngster delighted. One day before his 21st birthday, Wehrlein was crowned as the youngest-ever DTM champion. His rivals Edoardo Mortara, Mattias Ekström and Bruno Spengler silently went away, really disappointed, but not before having congratulated the champion. Collisions, drive-through penalties, spins – too many mishaps to jeopardize Wehrlein. 

While there was plenty of action in the opening laps of the race, one driver pulled away up front: after 26 laps, Timo Scheider won the race from Jamie Green and Maxime Martin – Scheider’s first win after almost five years. Scheider: “That drought has been much too long. After such a disastrous season, this is a nice ending for me and my team. Congratulations to Pascal for the title, he has done really well this season and deserved this success.”

For the first time this season, Scheider started from the front row of the grid and benefited from this grid position in a clever way. On lap two, he overtook pole sitter Maxime Martin and only needed few laps to pull a gap of almost five seconds. Then, he maintained this margin without many problems until the end of the race. Behind him, Martin, Jamie Green, Paul Di Resta and Mike Rockenfeller staged a thrilling battle for the remaining podium slots. Green overtook Di Resta, who was ahead of him on the grid, right after the start and also overtook Martin in the battle for second on lap nine. “That really was great fun today, we had some great racing,” the Brit commented. “Both overtaking manoeuvres were had, but fair. Fortunately, my car survived all these incidents without any damage.” At the finish, Martin still was happy with third place, in spite of having lost two positions: “Of course, I hoped to win this one, but the two Audis simply were too fast. It was a fierce battle to defend my podium position. This brings valuable points for BMW in the manufacturers’ standings.”  

While the first five drivers brought their cars home without any damage after the race, fierce duels were going on behind them in the battle for the 2015 drivers’ title. Before the starting lights went out at the Hockenheimring, there were many indications that the battle for the overall crown would only be decided in the grand finale on Sunday. Ekström started the race from seventh place and Mortara was ninth on the grid. Wehrlein only lined up four positions behind the Italian and dropped back even further after the first few corners. In fact, this was the big chance for his opponents, but while Wehrlein’s start wasn’t perfect, Ekström’s was even worse: the Swede’s Audi almost got stuck in its starting box: from seventh on the grid, he dropped back to 14th. Initially, Mortara seemed to be the one to benefit, moving up into fifth place, but having collided with fellow Audi driver Miguel Molina in the first corner in the process. The collision didn’t remain without consequences: the Italian came into the pits with a puncture at the end of the first lap – all his title chances were gone. “Of course, this contact was very, very unfortunate. A race to forget,” a visibly disappointed Mortara commented. Later on, he incurred a drive-through penalty after an attack on Timo Glock and parked his car in the pits for good after 17 laps.   

For Ekström, things didn’t go much better. He dropped back even more in the opening laps. Wehrlein also moved ahead of the Swede in 14th place. When Ekström was right behind the points’ leader at the start of lap three, Robert Wickens ran into his car after locking up under braking. Ekström spun and dropped back considerably. Unlike seven of his fellow DTM drivers – next to Mortara, Bruno Spengler, Gary Paffett, Adrien Tambay, Timo Glock, Robert Wickens and Augusto Farfus also retired early – the 37-year-old remained in the race and battled his way up to finish ninth. Nevertheless, he wasn’t able to challenge Wehrlein, neither in the race, nor in the drivers’ standings.  

The German didn’t try to stay out of any duels on his way to the title. Among others, he was in a fierce battle with plenty of contact with BMW driver Martin Tomczyk in the opening stages of the race. “One should never celebrate too early, especially not in the DTM. Scoring points here and finishing ahead of my rivals was very important to me,” Wehrlein said.