In his final year racing an Audi, Kelvin van der Linde put together an excellent DTM campaign but came up short to Mirko Bortolotti after leading into the final race.
Nobody managed more than his three victories, a virtuoso performance to win by 15.2s at a sodden Nurburgring the year’s most dominant margin.
The jovial South African also impressed his Abt team in the curtailed Nurburgring 24 Hours aboard a Lamborghini and branched into the World Endurance Championship with a Lexus run by the French ASP team, though the package was rarely competitive. A Formula E cameo for Abt in Berlin underlined his versatility.
Team perspective
The elder of two racing brothers, Kelvin van der Linde had to watch as BMW driver Sheldon claimed the DTM title he’d dearly wanted for himself in 2022. Then in 2023 he’d been outshone by team-mate Ricardo Feller, who finished five places higher in the standings.
As such there was no shortage of motivation for van der Linde in the last year of Abt’s long partnership with Audi, before it switches to Lamborghini for the 2025 DTM, and the two-time Nurburgring 24 Hours winner channelled that determination into his best DTM season yet.
The highlight reel wasn’t short on options.
At Zandvoort, he passed Rene Rast and Thierry Vermuelen (around the outside) at the fast Turn 7 right-hand sweeper in a moment that demonstrated beautiful judgement. As did outduelling Lucas Auer to win the opener at Hockenheim.
In tricky conditions too, he was supreme. When the weather was at its worst, at the Lausitzring, and the Nurburgring, there was no stopping him.
Abt Motorsport director Martin Tomczyk recalls that at this year’s Nurburgring 24 Hours, his second appearance at the event in a Lambo, van der Linde was also “very, very good in the wet conditions” and frustrated that the race did not resume due to dense fog. He was convinced that the choice of cut clicks could propel the car he shared with works drivers Marco Mapelli and Jordan Pepper into a race-winning position, although they ultimately had to settle for fifth in a deeply unsatisfying ending.
“Kelvin was immediately after the first half of the Nordschleife on the radio [as the field ran behind the safety car waiting for a window in the fog] saying 'let this race happen because I definitely will win it', he was so confident we had the right tyre choice,” reveals Tomczyk.
“He knew that he's exactly under these conditions very hard to beat.”
Tomczyk has plenty of justification for his assessment that “he is from the point of view of a complete package driver, one of the best GT drivers out there”. Previously a team-mate of Sheldon’s before announcing his retirement from driving in 2021, Tomczyk has had plenty of time to observe Kelvin van der Linde since he took up his role in March 2023.
Speaking before van der Linde’s departure from Abt was announced earlier this week, ahead of an expected switch to BMW, Tomczyk praised the 28-year-old for combining several important traits that made him a popular member of the Abt team he joined in 2014 - immediately winning the ADAC GT Masters title to earn an Audi factory deal that only concluded in 2023.
“There are three perspectives you can look at,” the 2011 DTM champion says when asked to explain van der Linde’s best attributes. “Kelvin is a race driver [who is] sitting in the car, knowing exactly what to do, when to do [it] and thinking about what he's doing while driving. That's not normal for a race driver, that he thinks together with the engineer and with the strategy guys and at the same time performing on the track.
“The second point is to be open for all medias, friendly to fans and fulfil every task without losing the main focus on the track. And one of the most important I would rate nearly the same is to motivate and push the team in a very constructive way. These are the three benefits that he combines, and this is something that you don’t see that often in motorsports.”
That there are multiple strings to van der Linde’s bow was underlined when Formula E rolled into Berlin. With regular driver Nico Muller among several drivers ruled out by the clashing Spa WEC round, Abt’s FE team reserve and sim driver took time out from his Lexus deal to deputise.
On his first FE start since February 2023, when the Johannesburg native was ruled out of racing in Cape Town by problems with the Mahindra-supplied suspension, van der Linde started and finished 11th, then beat both works Mahindra drivers in the second race. No points, but he’d made a point.
“At Berlin, you could see that he can adapt super quick,” adds Tomczyk. “There he proved that he just can jump in and perform and work as well with the team. He knew the team and he knew that he can rely on the engineers, rely on the mechanics, and that helps quite massively in terms of concentration and for pure performance.”
