![]() “At the same time, the financing of DTM Electric itself turned out to be more difficult than expected. “The link with this project was the precondition for obtaining the full sponsorship budget,” Berger said. Speaking to Autosport’s sister site Motorsport-Total, Berger insisted that no money was missing but rather laid the blame on problems raising money to finance the planned DTM Electric series. ![]() Team Bernhard Porsche’s eponymous boss Timo Bernhard adds: “In some areas there was kind of a competition, and I believe that for the future, this would have created more issues.”īut what prompted the ITR’s sale was unrelated to the pandemic, according to Berger. So I think somehow things grow together that belong together.” “As always competition is sometimes healthy, but in this case I felt it was more poisoned and it wasn’t a positive competition. “It was more competition between the two of them than working together,” HRT team principal Ulrich Fritz tells Autosport. This domestic rivalry, many DTM team bosses believe, helped nobody. Suddenly, DTM was now up against the ADAC GT Masters championship that already used GT3 cars in a fight to secure entries. With only BMW still committed to the series, Berger had to switch the platform to GT3 cars to stay alive. It appeared the Class 1 philosophy had a bright future.īut following the loss of Mercedes to Formula E at the end of 2018, the onset of the pandemic prompted the hammer blow of Audi pulling out in 2020. That resulted in an invitational meeting at Fuji in 2019, after Nissan, Honda and Lexus sent cars to the DTM’s Hockenheim finale. Berger oversaw the transition to highly efficient 2.0-litre turbo engines for 2019, as well as achieving the long-held ambition of closer ties with Japan’s Super GT series. The DTM’s long-time organiser ITR has been headed up by Gerhard Berger since 2017, when the ex-Formula 1 driver took over the helm from series founder Hans-Werner Aufrecht. Liimatainen says the DTM teams were left in limbo awaiting news on the future of the series “And I think what we’re facing now, it’s pretty much the normal in motor racing. “We had a luxury situation in the past years with the Class 1 because you would have two years contracts, three years contracts and whatever, so it made life quite a bit easier to plan,” Liimatainen admits to Autosport. ![]() His is one of the many teams that has been stuck in limbo over recent weeks, until last Thursday’s press conference staged by the ADAC, unable to plan for the new year with drivers and sponsors because there was no calendar – let alone a commercial agreement with the promoter on which to base contracts. “It is, in a way, a similar feeling, I think,” says Team Rosberg boss Kimmo Liimatainen, whose outfit won three titles in four years with Audi and Rene Rast during the Class 1 era.
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