DTM News: Audi and Ekstrom part ways after 23 Years

23 years ago, Mattias Ekstrom competed in the DTM as an Audi factory driver for the first time. Now he is finally saying “Adjo” to the four rings in his native Swedish.

The exceptional sportsman, who always stood by his opinions and was therefore also able to polarize, was a first-class ambassador for Audi: two-time DTM champion, rallycross world champion, Spa 24 Hour race winner, Dakar stage winner and conqueror of the legendary Streif downhill ski run – uphill in an all-electric Audi e-tron technology demonstrator.

Related Article: Audi driver Mattias Ekstrom ends DTM career

Emotions, memories and lots of autographs: This was Mattias Ekstrom’s farewell to Audi in Ingolstadt on September 26 – the brand with which he celebrated the greatest successes in his outstanding motorsport career. Many motorsport fans from the Audi workforce and Rolf Michl, Managing Director of Audi Sport GmbH, attended the farewell on the factory premises. “We owe Mattias an immense amount, and in turn we have helped him to the greatest successes of his career,” said Michl, who led the brand’s Dakar program to success this year as Head of Motorsport. “To this day, I am impressed not only by his continuous performance but also by his excellent team spirit. Mattias has never concentrated solely on racing. He has always helped to drive projects forward, support our developers and promote the teams he has worked with. With these qualities and his series of successes, he is a great role model for many international talents in motorsport. We wish him all the best for his future career.”

Ekstrom was not even an Audi factory driver when he won his first title with Audi in his native Sweden in 1999 at the age of 21 – as a private driver in the A4 quattro in the Swedish Touring Car Championship. Two years later, Ekstrom had a contract with Audi and contested his first season in the DTM. The prestigious touring car series was to remain his sporting home for 17 years. With Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline, the Scandinavian celebrated two titles in the Audi A4 DTM, finished four seasons as runner-up, scored 20 pole positions and 23 race wins.

While the DTM was his home for almost two decades, the Swede proved his sporting versatility in a number of other disciplines. Probably no other racing driver is as versatile. In 2011, together with Audi factory driver colleague Timo Scheider and Belgian driver Greg Franchi, he brought Audi’s young customer racing program its first overall 24-hour victory in the Audi R8 LMS GT3 sports car at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. In his own EKS team, he won the 2016 World Rallycross Championship with the Audi S1 EKS RX quattro, followed by three second places in the world championship. True to the motto painted on his helmet, “Go hard or go home”, he has also won the drivers classification four times and once the Nations Cup of the Race of Champions to date, an annual meeting of the world’s top motorsport drivers.

Among others, he beat Michael Schumacher twice and his son Mick once. In traditional rallying, the Swede achieved class successes at world championship level. In the Pure ETCR, he proved in 2021 as champion with the Group brand Cupra that he is also a perfect master of pioneering all-electric drives.