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The elder of the van der Linde brothers was absent from Audi’s customer racing announcement on Tuesday, where it named 14 drivers as part of its factory line-up for 2023.
With this news, the South African becomes the latest high-profile driver to leave the Volkswagen Group brand, whose decision to pull out of a planned LMDh assault on the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2023 has had repercussions elsewhere within its motorsport programmes.
Van der Linde’s DTM rivals Nico Muller and Rene Rast split with Audi at the end of last year to join Peugeot and BMW respectively, while Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts also jumped ship to BMW over the winter.
“Kelvin van der Linde has clinched championship titles, 24-hour race victories and many other successes with Audi,” said Audi customer …