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Senna and Prost, Hunt and Lauda, Häkkinen and Schumacher – motorsport history is littered with epic rivalries. Another you can add to that list is Mattias Ekström and Gary Paffett.

In the mid-2000s, Mattias and Gary were at the peak of their powers, trading blows at the sharp end of the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM). Nowadays, the pair are more friends than foe, with Mattias driving for the NEOM McLaren Extreme E Team, while Gary runs the operation on the ground as Sporting Director.

There’s an abundance of respect between the two, and it’s always been there, even when they were leading the respective charges for bitter rivals Audi and Mercedes.

“I hated losing to him more than anyone else, but the Monday after I could accept it and I would end up preparing with the will to beat him. But I never had an angry relationship with him,” Mattias explains. “There were others where I had no interest to barely say ‘hello’, but with Gary it was different. When I see relationships like [Rafael] Nadal and [Roger] Federer in tennis, you can see neither wanted to lose, but there was always a certain respect.”

Gary describes their strong relationship building after a few tense moments in their first season battling together, which led to an understanding between both that would see their relationship blossom off-track as their rivalry thrived on it.

“2004 was the first time we raced wheel-to-wheel with each other and we had a couple of moments where we didn’t like each other,” Gary recalls. “But I think it was on the podium at Lausitzring that we turned to each other, shook hands, and said ‘that’s how it’s going to be’.

“From then on, there was an understanding of how we’re going to race. I spoke to Mattias more than I spoke to most of my teammates, to be honest. We just had a mutual respect, a mutual understanding.

“I don’t think there was anyone else that beat me, who I thought had done a better job, as a better driver, to be honest,” he continues. “If Mattias beat me, I would always feel like he deserved it. I wasn't happy to lose to him, but I could deal with it personally and it didn't break me for months afterwards. Whereas, normally, I would always think 'well, the car wasn't good enough', or something like that."

Mattias adds: “Gary is who I enjoyed battling most with.

“When you race on a track, you can crash into each other, you rub a bit, I never worried that he would do something where you end up in a tyre wall. He knows when to give up, and he knows I will give up similarly, so the fight was a quality fight. And this is something I will always respect Gary for because he also knows when it is a fair race.” 

Mattias moved to DTM in 2001, with Gary following two years later. By the time Gary arrived, Mattias was already established as a title contender, having won three times en route to third in the 2002 standings. Gary's first title tilt came after he moved to the factory-supported HWA team in 2004, where he immediately made an impact. 

“In 2004 I came in, moved to the factory team, and it was a breakout year,” Gary recalls. “I had no expectation, I came into a team with Bernd Schieder leading the team, Jean Alesi, Christijan Albers, people like that in the team and for me to be the frontrunner leading the fight for the championship against [Mattias] was incredible, and it happened very quickly.”

Mattias drew first blood, winning the 2004 title, but for Gary, he says that campaign was stronger for him than his own maiden title triumph a year later. 

“I actually think 2004 was probably a better year. I won five races in a row in 2004 but one of them was Shanghai, which wasn’t a championship race, and then Lausitzring I won but later got disqualified. In 2005, it was more difficult to win that many in a row, but both years were pretty special.” 

Detailing why, Mattias says the driver influence was key, with later generations of car being less difficult to handle and more balanced out across the grid, saying: “In my view, they were much more difficult so if you could handle it, you could clearly see the difference. If you did everything right, you could make everything right.” 

The 2005 campaign is regarded by many as the peak Ekström-Paffett season. The pair shared eight wins from 11 that year. While there was very little to choose between the two, they were a clear step ahead from the rest of the pack. That meant that even when quietly struggling to match Gary, Mattias was able to make good of the situation.

“For me, the whole year – now it’s history I can say – we were not sorted,” he reveals. “Every weekend, starting from the first one where Gary beat me so badly, and I still finished P2, but the gaps were so big to the pack.”

That year’s duel reached its crescendo in Istanbul. While the title mathematically came down to the wire, it was the trip to Turkey for the penultimate round where the title battle was decided, according to Gary. He started the race from pole, and won, but not before a change in the weather complicated matters.

“The whole year we’d swapped top positions in the championship, one point, one point every weekend,” he says of the lead-up to Istanbul. “I was pole, it was Mercedes 1-4, so pretty comfortable, and then it rained on Sunday. Mercedes were the slowest cars in warm-up by seconds, we were three seconds behind.

“That was probably the decider of the championship more than Hockenheim, which was the last race. After that, there was a bigger points gap, and it was difficult to make up. So that, for me, was kind of the deciding point.”

In 2006, Gary departed DTM to test for McLaren in Formula 1 full-time. The abrupt end to the titanic battles between the two was followed by a period where Mattias admits he wasn't at his best and he "lost a bit of the true happiness for the racing". Gary would return after a year out, bringing the battles and the mutual respect back with him.

“I actually found happiness in going racing with him again,” says Mattias. “DTM for me was a bit emotional after long, but when Gary was back, it was good old stories, chatting, some good battles, but even now people keep telling me that those years, it was a different type of respect.”

Mattias' former rival is now effectively his boss, but the fond memories of their time racing against each other remain.

“My ego says if you have a good day, you win. With Gary, I had good days and I finished P2,” he says. “There is this feeling when you are qualifying or in a race when you have done everything you could, but there is nothing more left to put on the table, so even if you finish P2, it’s a nice feeling, because you have squeezed everything out of yourself and that means it is a fair one to lose.

“That happened a few times, when I lost to Gary when I had nothing left. The others were miles away, so then you know I have to give credit to someone who beats you on a good day.

“To be beaten on a bad day is really nothing special because we all mess up. To be beaten on a good day is pretty hard to swallow, but it helps when you have some mutual respect.”