Audi ready to sign off on three decades in the DTM

As Audi prepares to rejoin the postponed 2020 German Touring Car Masters (DTM) season in August for what will be its final year in the series, it looks back at the company's numerous DTM highlights and multiple championship victories, and salutes the cars that bore the four rings to victory.

The DTM, which ran from 1984 to 1996 before resuming under a new format in 2000, has been an integral part of Audi's story since the company first participated in the series in 1990.

To date, Audi has won 23 DTM championship titles, including 11 driver titles. As the series has travelled not just through Germany but across Europe and as far afield as Moscow and Shanghai, Audi has taken 114 victories, 345 podiums, 106 pole positions and 112 fastest laps to date.

The 2019 season was Audi's most successful ever and, hopefully, when the 2020 series gets underway, there will be more victories to celebrate.

In 1990 Audi entered the DTM in some style with the 4.8m luxury V8 saloon. In its ultimate guise, the naturally aspirated 3.6-litre V8 engine delivered 464bhp and 380Nm of torque, distributed by a six-speed transmission and a twin-plate carbon fibre clutch to a quattro all-wheel drive system.

In 1992, Audi entered the car with a modified engine crankshaft, which was twice approved by the ONS, German motorsport's governing body, before eventually being declared illegal in June. Audi withdrew before the seventh race of the season, and while the brand's initial, highly successful foray into the DTM ended much too soon, epic memories remain.

Audi began planning its return to the DTM in 1993 by developing a car to comply with the new FIA Class 1 Touring Car regulations. These were designed to level the playing field among the manufacturers, with every team forced to use a 2.5-litre naturally aspirated engine.

In 1996, three years after Audi left the DTM - then known as the German Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft or German Touring Car Championship - the series folded.

The four-rings marque was represented on the grid of the new series from the start, although not initially by an Audi factory team. Instead, the privately run Team Abt Sportsline developed and fielded the Abt-Audi TT-R.

The ban was due in no small part to the fact that, in 1996, Audi had entered the A4 quattro SuperTouring in seven national championships - and won them all. While Abt was unable to play the quattro ace, at least the sound of V8 thunder returned, as the TT-R was powered by a 457bhp eight-cylinder engine, sending the drive to the rear wheels.

After only three races of the 2004 season, the car had claimed its first victory, and gave Audi the manufacturers' crown and Sweden's Mattias Ekstrom his first DTM drivers' title during its debut year. Audi responded with the RS5 Turbo DTM.

The team was bolstered by the arrival of the highly experienced British DTM driver Jamie Green, and during the RS5 Turbo's debut season Audi won the manufacturers' championship by 582 points - the largest in DTM history.

During 2019, Audi's engineers extracted more than 602bhp from the RS5 DTM's 2.0-litre TFSI petrol direct-fuel-injection engine, a figure that's even more impressive considering that DTM cars run on regular, 102-octane forecourt fuel.

The RS5 Turbo is sure to provide spectacular racing when the DTM gets underway in August. It has already proven a worthy successor to Audi's legendary DTM race machines. And when the four-ring marque concludes its final season in the series, the RS5 Turbo DTM can proudly take its place alongside its illustrious predecessors in the Audi museum. Although, like so many of the iconic race and road cars from Audi's 111-year history, it will be seen in action again at special events.