– After a years-long struggle, Nicki Thiim’s big dream of starting in the DTM with Aston Martin is coming true this year. But why wasn’t the Dane, who has been a factory driver for the British brand for eleven years, already in the Class 1 Aston Martin from R-Motorsport, which was fielded by HWA, back in 2019?
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“It has always been my motivation to compete there one day,” Thiim says today about the DTM. “That was already a dream back then when I was with Audi – especially the Class 1 vehicles. That was something very special.” Thiim knows what he’s talking about, because at the end of 2014, the then-pilot of the Audi squad was allowed to test the Audi RS 5 DTM during a young talent evaluation in Jerez.
After his Aston Martin factory contract in 2015, however, the dream faded somewhat into the background, even though the brand was at the start in the DTM alongside Audi and BMW in 2019 following Mercedes’ exit. But why did Thiim play no role?
Aston Martin did not release factory drivers for R-Motorsport
“That was pushed forward in 2019 by the Swiss from R-Motorsport,” explains the 36-year-old Dane when asked by Motorsport-Total.com. “I was more connected to the factory, and the focus back then was on the Pro category in the WEC. Those were probably the best years of my racing career, because those were still the Pro times in the WEC. So there wasn’t really a chance for me to take that path.”
What Thiim means by this: R-Motorsport was the licensee of Aston Martin in the DTM at the time, but it was not a direct factory entry by Aston Martin Racing, as is still carried out today in the GT sector by Prodrive. For this reason, the factory drivers at the time, which included Thiim, were used for the GTE factory entry in the World Endurance Championship (WEC).
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A DTM start was not possible anyway, because in 2019 the DTM season opener in Hockenheim on the first weekend of May already collided with the 6-hour race in Spa-Francorchamps taking place on Saturday. For this reason, R-Motorsport relied on four drivers in the DTM who did not come from the Aston Martin squad: Paul di Resta, Daniel Juncadella, Jake Dennis, and Ferdinand Habsburg. Even Thomas Preining was a candidate at the time.
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The Aston Martin decision was to pay off for Thiim in hindsight, however: while the R-Motorsport project in the 2019 DTM did not get beyond two sixth places and was ended after one year, Thiim won the LMGTE Pro class with his partner Marco Sorensen in the WEC season running from September 2019 to November 2020, something he had already achieved in 2016.
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“I shouldn’t complain, because as a result I won two world championship titles in the World Endurance Championship with Aston Martin,” he says today, not without pride.
Especially since he is now finally starting in the DTM with the Aston Martin. “The DTM’s switch from Class 1 to GT3 opened the door again so that this dream could come true,” Thiim says, happy about the opportunity that was still unexpected a few years ago.
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