Wieso Ex-Audi driver Nicki Thiim criticizes his former employer and he can’t understand the current strategy after the GT successes of the past
In 2025, for the first time since the end of the “old” DTM in the mid-1990s, there will be no Audi racing car in the traditional series. The aim is to launch a GT3 successor for the R8 LMS via the secret project R-Next.
Instead, Audi has subordinated everything in motorsport to its entry into Formula 1 in 2026. Does ex-Audi driver Nicki Thiim understand this? “There are many things on this planet that I cannot understand, especially in the automotive industry.” “The German manufacturers in particular have shot themselves in the foot.”
Incidentally, before the 35-year-old Dane became an Aston Martin works driver in 2016, he was part of the Audi squad: at the time, he was allowed to test Audi’s DTM prototypes, and thanks to the approval of his employer, he was repeatedly able to sit in the Audi R8 LMS.
“When I was there, Audi was absolutely the highest”
“When I was there, Audi was absolutely the highest – with DTM, LMP1 and in the GT area,” Thiim looks back on the great days of Audi Sport. ”Every racing driver wanted to drive with these four rings – incredibly great successes celebrated, incredible history. It’s sad, of course, that something like that comes to an end.”
Thiim finds it particularly difficult to understand the decision to cut back on customer sport – the vehicles will no longer be built and the driver squad will be disbanded – because, in his opinion, Audi is so big that it almost finances itself, he says.
“The manufacturers today are only concerned with keeping everything at zero. It’s such a nice product that has done well all over the world and has financed itself with customer racing. That’s why it’s difficult.”
“There are people sitting up there who have ideas”
In 2024 alone, Audi customer teams have won 206 of 734 races worldwide, as the Ingolstadt-based company itself communicated in a press release a few months ago. That’s a success rate of 28.1 percent. Despite the cutback in customer racing, there are still over 1,000 vehicles in circulation.
“What can I say? I have my opinion,” said Thiim about Audi’s approach. ‘Everyone has their opinion on this. But there are people sitting up there who have ideas and visions. You have to accept that too.’
