After six years of competing in the German Touring Car Championship, most commonly known as the DTM, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class saloon turned its wheels in anger for the last time at last weekend’s Hockenheim race.
In front of 120,000 spectators that attended the 2011 season finale, the C-Class scored its fifth consecutive win at Hockenheim with Jamie Green crossing the finishing line first, 7.6 seconds ahead of Martin Tomczuk’s Audi A4.
The C-Class leaves the DTM with the distinction of scoring 85 wins in 159 races, which makes it the most successful car in the series history. It can also lay claim to beating its archrival, the Audi A4, by a considerable margin, scoring 51 wins to A4’s 34 in the six years that the two cars have been racing against each other.
From 2012, the DTM gets a total overhaul, with both Mercedes and Audi launching all-new rac cars, the C-Class Coupe and the A5 Coupe respectively, and BMW joining the series after an 18 year-long absence with the M3 Coupe.
“With our C-Class, we have now won more than half the races it has entered”, said Mercedes Motorsport vice president Norbert Haug.
“Since the DTM was revived in 2000, Mercedes-Benz has won 19 races out of 26 at Hockenheim. Next year, the DTM will welcome a third competitor, BMW. At the end of an era, thank you to everybody who has made the third generation possible from the start of 2012,” he added.
PHOTO GALLERY
