Recently Crowned DTM Champion and protagonist of this article; Sheldon van der Linde is a 23-year-old racing driver born and raised in South Africa. Racing at the tender age of 6 and inspired by his father Shaun who did the same in his adolescence, the 2022 DTM champion then progressed into the South African Polo Cup championship. The rest, as they say, is history!

At the end of 2018, Van der Linde received an invitation from BMW Motorsport to attend the DTM Young Driver Test impressively securing a race seat for the following season. Van der Linde was later signed as the official test and reserve driver for BMW i Andretti in Formula E. Making great strides at such a young age he managed to achieve his goal of racing in the DTM and being a DTM champion within just five years.

In 2022 Sheldon entered his fourth year as an official BMW works driver and extended into a long-term partnership with the Bavarian manufacturer as a now established DTM and GT3 driver in race series around the world. Van der Linde claimed the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) 2022 champions title after finishing third in the final race at the Hockenheimring Germany on Sunday, driving a Shubert Motorsport BMW M4. He is the first-ever DTM champion from South Africa and the first BMW winner since German Marco Wittmann in 2016.

The first-place position was taken by Marco Wittmann, who also piloted a BMW, while René Rast brought his ABT Audi R8 home in second place. Van der Linde celebrated three wins and a total of six podiums in his championship season. It was his fourth season in the DTM and the first for competing for Schubert Motorsport, who also secured the team title for the 2022 championship.

 

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Filled with elated emotions, Van der Linde shared these words after the race: “It feels fantastic now that this weight is off my shoulders. Ever since I was a child, I have dreamed of driving in the DTM. I am unbelievably proud and delighted now that I have won it. Growing up in South Africa, making the leap to the DTM seemed a very long way away. But now it has all worked out – I can barely believe it!”

Van der Linde’s older brother, Kelvin, also represented their family and the whole of South Africa. Armed with a vast amount of experience in the Audi R8 LMS GT3, Kelvin has scored four wins and five pole positions so far, he came in fifth place in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters race.

The head of BMW M Motorsport, Andreas Roos, described the achievement by Sheldon and Schubert Motorsport as ‘unbelievable, incredible and epic’.