Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt K
Sheldon van der Linde is a great addition to BMW and DTM. I understand that BMW's squad is full, meaning there's no customer team, which is a shame.
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BMW can't seem to find a customer for their cars. There were rumours about Motopark using the capacities they originally assigned for a potential F3 campaign, but nothing came of it. Even with the series trying to lower costs, it's still not enough for some teams. Plus what GT3 team will want to move from winning in ADAC GT Masters or Blancpain GT to getting their butt handed by the works teams in DTM? It's a slight miracle that WRT is on the grid, but I guess they did get a good offer by Audi, since they've always been good customers. At the moment, it would even be a slight miracle if we get at least one Aston Martin on the grid by Hockenheim.
But I still wonder how DTM can be that expensive. There isn't much travelling involved, since most races are in Western Europe/Germany, where the majority of teams are anyway. There are enough single spec parts in the cars, so costs of spare parts shouldn't be that high. Now I don't know how many people need to be in the pit crews and such, but I presume that's an area where you could still save. But honestly, you can only save that much money. So does it come down to expensive cars in the end? Now I'm all for trying to get your best bang for the buck. But if DTM wants to be above GT3, it should have a package that'll allow for going faster than GT3. But now DTM has their new class one regulations, which makes it hard to switch regs again.