DTM will have a very prominent visitor when the series goes to Red Bull Ring in Austria on 21-23 September this year.
The five times FIA World Rally Championship World Champion Sebastien Ogier will run with Mercedes-AMG at this round.
That makes all three manufacturers each have one extra car once during the season.
At Hockenheim it was Audi Sport, who gave Mattias Ekström one final goodbye race, while BMW will give Alessandro Zanardi the opportunity at Misano in two weeks time.
Ogier has primarily raced in Rally cars, but actually has a couple of Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup race starts in 2013 and 2014, so he has already tried circuit racing.
Photo: Mercedes Motorsport
His French background will give him plenty of experience from asphalt rallies, and is, just like his country man Sebastian Loeb, absolutely flying on tarmac stages. Loeb has had some years in circuit racing too, before he jumped into the FIA World Rallycross Championship.
Ogier is currently second in the WRC standings with 5 rounds to go. A problematic Rally Sweden with only a few points on his account, and a zero-score in Portugal, has cost him many points. But a lot can change in 5 weekends in WRC.
Sebastien Ogier is testing at the Vallelunga track today and tomorrow to get used to the Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM car – a test that Zanardi also runs in with his hand controlled BMW M4 DTM car. Ogier has, just like Zanardi, previously run in the DTM Renn Taxi as a chauffeur, so we has tried out a DTM car before. But now doubt it’s a big difference between the 500 bhp DTM car with rear wheel drive to his approx 300 bhp four-wheel drive Ford Fiesta WRC.
