Niverville race car driver David Richert with his car.
A Niverville man lived his dream this fall when he raced his way across America in a special racing series to earn a spot racing a test car in Germany.
Manitoban race car driver, twenty-six year old David Richert, was selected by Volkswagen to represent North America at a race event in Europe.
After a season-long battle on the track, Richert was able to take care of things off track to win the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Media Contest. Richert generated almost twice as much exposure as any other race car driver in the series and earned the respect of many Volkswagen top executives.
“I did pretty well this year and managed to win the Jetta TDI Cup media contest – I actually had double the amount of media exposure as any other driver so that was pretty cool,” says Richert. “Volkswagen then sent me off to Europe for a race in Germany where I managed to beat my instructor, so that was nice.”
Richert raced in the final event of the ADAC Volkswagen Polo Cup in Germany, October 24-26, at the world famous Hockenheimring where he finished in a satisfying 22nd position out of 31 cars. The Polo Cup is a support race for the massive Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM – German Touring Car) race weekend where attendance figures reached approximately 150,000 spectators.
“This was a huge opportunity – it was a monumental challenge to bring the car up to speed with such little track time,” Richert added. “I have received an incredible amount of support from home and the fact that we have pulled this off is an amazing testament to the community we live in.”
The young farmer literally went from combining in Niverville one afternoon to racing around a track surrounded by cornfields in Iowa the next day, after earning a spot in the Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” Jetta TDI Cup. There, Richert burned up the track in an eight race series that saw him racing in communities across North America, earning him the trip to Europe.
