OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE
Shanghai, China, Nov 28, 2010
Paul Di Resta (24) is the 2010 DTM Champion. He won the title with second place in the season’s finale which had been staged at Shanghai for the first time. Paul thus overtook his team mate Bruno Spengler who had started the final race as the points leader. The race in China was Paul’s 42nd DTM race. He won six of them, started from pole position six times and posted seven fastest race laps.
Paul Di Resta is a cousin of former Mercedes-Benz DTM driver Dario Franchitti, who won the US IndyCar series for the third time and the Indy 500 for the second time in 2010. Paul began racing karts at the age of eight. In 2000, he won the McLaren Mercedes Champions of the Future kart series. Three years later, he took part in his first car race in the British Formula Renault. In 2004, he won the McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award and became a Mercedes-Benz Junior.
Racing for English team Manor Motorsport, Paul Di Resta entered the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2005, finishing his debut year 10th overall after three pole positions and one podium place. In the following year, he won five races and clinched the championship ahead of the 2010 Formula One World Champion Sebastian Vettel.
In 2007, Paul moved up to DTM and finished his second race in the championship in second place – with a last year’s car. At the end of that year he was fifth overall. One year later, now racing a new model, Di Resta took his first DTM race win and finished the year runner-up. In 2009, Paul Di Resta was third overall in the DTM and also became test and reserve driver for Force India Mercedes in Formula One.
Paul Di Resta (AMG Mercedes C-Class): “I am really happy about my DTM title win - a dream came true. I thank my entire team and everybody at Mercedes-Benz for this great season.”
Norbert Haug, Vice President Mercedes-Benz Motorsport: “A difficult final of a great 2010 DTM season with Paul as the deserved Champion and Gary as the Shanghai winner – for the second time after he had won also the so far only race here in 2004.
“This season, Paul did the best job of all – Bruno Spengler who arrived here as the overall leader would have deserved as well as Gary Paffett – but in the end Paul achieved the well-deserved title win.
“A cordial thank you for the first three places in the championship and nine wins out of 11 races to everybody in the HWA team under Gerhard Ungar, to the Mücke and the Persson team.
“I also want to thank all active and hardworking colleagues who are usually not on the front row – our specialists of organisation, media, marketing and controlling – and, of course, also the ladies in our office, who are always working at real “race speed” day-to-day and always precisely.
“There are no great victories without a great team, and we have a great team.”
Copyright © 2010, Mercedes-Benz-Blog. All rights reserved.
