1984 DPM (German Touring Car Championship) - Discussion and Results

[T-Man]

This will be the thread for discussions regarding the 1984 season of the Deutsche Produktionswagen Meisterschaft.


After the DRM (Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft) switched to Group C regulation in 1982 the ONS (national organisation for motorsport in germany) planned out a system of a classless Championship based on the international group A reglement. According to the cars engine capacity there would be weight penalties. Also there were noise restrictions for the cars in the new series. So in 1984 the new championship headed off to a bumpy start. There were a buch of problems and complains but the new ruleset worked quite well, with 7 different cars claiming wins during the season.

Calendar (usually 1 race x 100km unless otherwise noted)

Round 1 - Zolder - March 11th
Round 2 - Hockenheim - April 8th
Round 3 - AVUS - May 13th (2 races x 57km)
Round 4 - Mainz-Finthen - May 26th
Round 5 - Wunstorf - June 10th
Round 6 - Nürburgring - June 17th (2 races x 55km)
Round 7 - Norisring - July 1st
Round 8 - Nürburgring - July 8th
Round 9 - Diepholz - July 22nd
Round 10 - Hockenheim - August 5th (2 races x 75km)
Round 11 - Zolder - August 19th
Round 12 - Nürburgring - September 23rd


The Main contenders:

There were loads of cars in the championship, so I will just list the main drivers here.

Alfa Romeo GTV6:
Peter Oberndorfer

BMW 635CSi:
Volker Strycek in the Gubin car
Harald Grohs in the Vogelsang BMW
Kurt König in his private car
Udo Schneider in the Auto Budde car
Leopold von Bayern, Walter Brun and Hans-Joachim Stuck for team Brun

BMW 323i:
Winfried Vogt for Team Immo Klein

Chevrolet Camaro:
Peter John and Dieter Hegels

Ford Capri:
Fred Räker most likely in the Autoveri car

Ford Mustang:
Manfred Trint for Ringshausen

MG Metro Turbo:
Armin Hahne

Mitsubishi Starion:
Richard Friedrich jr.

Opel:
Karl-Heinz Schäfer in an Manta
Robert Walterscheid-Müller in a Manta
Jürgen Fritzsche in a Kadett C and a Manta.

Rover Vitesse:
Olaf Manthey and another car originally driven by Joerg van Ommen and later Dieter Selzer

Volvo 240 Turbo:
Per Stureson
Per-Gunnar Andersson

Other cars include:
Mercedes 380SLC, Fiat Ritmo, VW Golf, Audi 80, Opel Monza, BMW 528i, VW Scirocco, Opel Ascona, Mazda RX-7

65(!) drivers managed to score points during the premier season of the DTM, and a lot more attempted their luck.

There are a whole bunch of misteries about this first season of the DPM which later evolved into the famous DTM.
Currently I've got around different drivers attempting their luck in that year.

[chunterer]

Excellent, i've been waiting for this one to kick off T-Man! Many thanks forr starting it off.

I'm very interested in learning more about the first proper year of Group A in Germany which quickly became one of the leading domestic series for this regulation of category in the following years.

The classless system clears something up that was bugging me ever since I saw the Norisring footage from motosport-dvd, I.E. the obsolete and rather antiquated Kadett 2.0 mixing it with pukka 635's and the Rover at the front of the field for many laps when in reality this was a Div 2/Class B capacity car.

[T-Man]

Okay, I guess we have to start somewhere, so lets take a closer look at some of the entered cars.

First off the MG Metro Turbo of Armin Hahne, which was one of the Roger Dowson built works-cars. A year later another Metro appeared in the hands of Volker Anhalt, but I've got no clue if this is Hahne's car, one of the other works cars or a different one altogether.


Next up are the Ford Mustangs, there is the quite successful Ringshausen car of Lufthansa-captain Manfred Trint. He probably could have won the championship, if the car would have been more reliable, the speed was certainly there. Was this one of the 2 (?) Zakspeed cars or did Ringshausen built that car on his own? The car was later driven by Roland Asch in 85 & 86.
A second Ford Mustang was driven by Bodo Jähn at the AVUS, which makes sense, as Jähn was one of the Berlin-based drivers. This car probably was entered by Auto-Veri and attempted to qualify for the Donington 500 2 weeks before it's only DPM outing. Co-Driver of Jähn was Gordon Spice. Could this be the 1983 CC Motorsport car that raced at the Spa 24h and the Silverstone TT in the hands of the Martin Brothers?
Racingsportscars ETCC page lists the 1984 Euromotor Luxemburg Mustang as being an ex-AutoVeri car. So the car may have changed owners again after the failed attempts at Donington and the AVUS.
Then the cars history could look like this: built by CC Motorsports in 1983 and raced a few times by the Martin brothers during that year. Sold to AutoVeri in early 1984, sold to Euromotor in mid-84. Then this could have been the car that was used by german Reinhold Gröpper in 1985-87.


Now the Rovers are quite simple. There were only 2 cars, both built by Frieder Nickel and supported by Austin Rover Germany. Lead driver was Olaf Manthey and second driver was originally Joerg van Ommen. van Ommen was replaced by Dieter Selzer after round 6, because he was more than unhappy with his number 2 status in the team, despite securing pole positions for the first 3 races.

[T-Man]

Some more info:

The Metro Turbo used by Hahne was chassis no. 007


Now the Volvos:
4 cars appeared during the 1984 season.

Per Stureson entered a few races in his yellow/blue car which also did a couple of ETCC rounds in 83-84.
Peggen Andersson took part in the final 3 rounds of the season in a white car sponsored by Sibylla.

Neither of the 2 main drivers had a fixed starting number, Stureson can be seen with 79 and 89, Peggen with 41 and 84.

Jürg Bächi raced a white Volvo at the Supersprint at the Nürburgring (round 12) the car was sponsored by Labbet ab (swedish company?) and it says TL Racing on the side - could this be a Thomas Lindström built car?

A fourth car was entered by Greger Peterson at round 10 but I haven't been able to find out anything about that one.



Chevrolet Camaros:

The most known car here is the #77 American Car Services Camaro in the american flag design driven by Peter John.

Then there were the 2 Mönninghof cars (9 + 10) which had a white/blue and mirrored blue/white livery. Drivers were Peter John(for at least one round at the AVUS where he was involved in a crash), Ralf-Dieter Schreiber, Franz Prangemeier and very likely Dieter Hegels.

2 more cars appeared for dutchs Bert Moritz and Hennie Hemmes, most likely their own cars, which they raced in the Netherlands.


Mitsubishi Starion:

Richard Friedrich jr. raced the black #37 Starion on a couple of occasions. The car was LHD, so it was most likely a self-prepared car with no links to BBW or Japan.

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by T-Man

Okay, I guess we have to start somewhere, so lets take a closer look at some of the entered cars.

First off the MG Metro Turbo of Armin Hahne, which was one of the Roger Dowson built works-cars. A year later another Metro appeared in the hands of Volker Anhalt, but I've got no clue if this is Hahne's car, one of the other works cars or a different one altogether.


Next up are the Ford Mustangs, there is the quite successful Ringshausen car of Lufthansa-captain Manfred Trint. He probably could have won the championship, if the car would have been more reliable, the speed was certainly there. Was this one of the 2 (?) Zakspeed cars or did Ringshausen built that car on his own? The car was later driven by Roland Asch in 85 & 86.
A second Ford Mustang was driven by Bodo Jähn at the AVUS, which makes sense, as Jähn was one of the Berlin-based drivers. This car probably was entered by Auto-Veri and attempted to qualify for the Donington 500 2 weeks before it's only DPM outing. Co-Driver of Jähn was Gordon Spice. Could this be the 1983 CC Motorsport car that raced at the Spa 24h and the Silverstone TT in the hands of the Martin Brothers?
Racingsportscars ETCC page lists the 1984 Euromotor Luxemburg Mustang as being an ex-AutoVeri car. So the car may have changed owners again after the failed attempts at Donington and the AVUS.
Then the cars history could look like this: built by CC Motorsports in 1983 and raced a few times by the Martin brothers during that year. Sold to AutoVeri in early 1984, sold to Euromotor in mid-84. Then this could have been the car that was used by german Reinhold Gröpper in 1985-87.


Now the Rovers are quite simple. There were only 2 cars, both built by Frieder Nickel and supported by Austin Rover Germany. Lead driver was Olaf Manthey and second driver was originally Joerg van Ommen. van Ommen was replaced by Dieter Selzer after round 6, because he was more than unhappy with his number 2 status in the team, despite securing pole positions for the first 3 races.

Excellent stuff. I am 99% certain that all Group A Metro's all came from Roger Dowson in the UK. One or two would have been converted normally aspirated cars from 1983 I guess.

I think the one that went to Germany, initially, was Paul Taft's Klaxon car, but i've also read that Taft's car was the very first one built which likely was Tony Pond's n/a engined car from later in the '83 season. This would mean that 007 wouldn't be Taft's!

The CC Mustang question is interesting. We need to see what it looks like from the Donington 500 to gain a clearer picture, as it may well have remianed in red and white livery before going to Germany, but I do not know what it looked like before Reinhold Gropper ran it in the blue (replacing red) and White scheme in 1985?

The point you raise about the Rovers is also very interesting. I thought I remembered Van Ommen being involved for a while but wasn't sure. In any case for him to be disillusioned, even though he was quicker that Olaf Manthey is saying something as we know Manthey was always a quick Group A driver and certainly got a great deal out of the Vitesse in it's early days in Germany!

[NaBUru38]

More info at Wikipedia.

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by NaBUru38

More info at Wikipedia.

That's great, but just posting a link doesn't actually aid the discussion much?

Might be a good idea to select some info from Wiki to post here to discuss with others NaBUru?

Just a thought.

[NaBUru38]

I never read this section, so I have no idea how it works.

I'm working (volunteering) at the Spanish-language Wikipeda doing a car racing portal, with weekly article selections. But that's another story.

[chunterer]

Hope you continue to visit our section!

[T-Man]

Now thats that taken care of, let's continue the investigation

regarding the Metro, it might has nothing to say, but on the picture on Frank's ETCC site it looks like Hahnes car already had the air intake below the front bumper, it was used for some kind of fuel cooler or something similar. This can also be seen on the TT cars and the 1985 car that Soper drove.

On the only picture i was able to find of Taft's car, there is no such intake. Hahnes car also had different mirros compared to Taft. But on the other hand, during the 2 months between Tafts last race in the BTCC and Hahne first appearance in the DPM, those changes could have been done.

Here's the video you probably were speaking of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-y60h4y2D0

There are a whole bunch of "unknown" cars included in there. 1-2 528's, a few VW Golfs, Opel Mantas, etc.

The race was won by the great late Winni Vogt.