Race driver and DTM Champion Martin Tomczyk has announced that he will not compete for Audi in the 2012 racing season.
Race driver and DTM Champion Martin Tomczyk has announced that he will not compete for Audi in the 2012 racing season.
When Tomczyk began his career with Audi, joining Team ABT Sportsline with the Abt-Audi TT-R, he was the youngest DTM driver in history. That was back in 2001, and whilst announcing that he now plans to move on and take up new challenges, Tomczyk has described the years since then as “in hindsight, something very special”.
The driver, who this year reached the highest point in his career by winning the 2011 championship title, became Audi factory driver in the S line and Audi Junior Team in 2003. Since just a year after that in 2004 he has competed in the DTM for Audi with the A4, firstly for Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline and then with the Audi Sport Team Phoenix in 2011. In 2006, during his sixth DTM season, Tomczyk finally won his first taste of success with a race win – the first of seven which he has now achieved.
The 29 year old driver from Rosenheim says that he made his decision to leave Audi “after careful consideration”. Paying tribute to the team which he has worked with for so many years Tomczyk gave special mention to Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, the Head of Audi Motorsport, who he has said was always there for him, along with the rest of the Audi team.
Dr Ullrich himself paid tribute to "Eleven special years of highs and lows", and has said that the company and team deeply regret losing such a successful driver, but said that they understand that he would like to try something new after achieving the goal he set out to achieve with the Audi team by winning this year’s championship. Dr Ullrich also wished the driver the “best of luck” for the future.
What the new Audi line up for next year’s DTM season will look like now that Tomczyk has left is due to be decided over the next few weeks. But with two CTM champions under contract with Audi – Mattias Ekström (Sweden) and Timo Scheider (Germany) - and with a full 8 drivers who had a podium finish at least once in 2011’s DTM season, the future still looks bright for the team, who are currently planning to field seven cars in the 2012 season.
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