- Audi uses experience-based advantage in rolling out efficiency technology
- Audi RS 5 DTM most successful model in current DTM era
- DTM Champion René Rast races from record to record
Since as far back as 2001, Audi has been combining turbocharging with gasoline direct injection (TFSI) in production cars. When this efficiency technology was rolled out in the DTM, the brand with the four rings leveraged its experience-based advantage and set numerous records in the 2019 season.
The four-cylinder turbo engine of the Audi RS 5 DTM is the most efficient and most powerful engine in the company’s DTM history. In its first year of racing, Audi’s engineers extracted more than 610 horsepower from the power-plant with just two liters of displacement.
In terms of reliability, the new engine was instantly exemplary as well: Audi was the only manufacturer to use no more than the allocated number of 1.5 engines per car and therefore did not suffer any deduction of points in the manufacturers’ championship. At the end of the season, Pietro Fittipaldi’s engine had the highest mileage of more than 5,000 kilometers.
Even before the end of the season, Audi secured all three titles in the drivers’, manufacturers’ and teams’ championships in 2019. As a result, the brand scored its third triple DTM win after 2004 and 2017.
Audi won the manufacturers’ championship with a 582-point advantage – marking the largest one in DTM history. As the first manufacturer ever, Audi scored more than 1,000 points (1,132) in one DTM season. In as many as three races in 2019, Audi netted the maximum number of points in the manufacturers’ classification.
With twelve victories, twelve pole positions, twelve fastest laps, 40 of 54 possible podium finishes and all three championship titles, the brand achieved the most successful DTM season overallin the company’s history. In 1991, 2015 and 2016, Audi had won ten races, respectively.
