DTM still has a long way to go to survive by Rob Veltman

[FIRE]

Because Mercedes doesn't like 2L touring car racing...

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by duke_toaster

Super 2000 is working, it's a nice set of technical regulations as it features normal cars but accomodates large family/executive cars like the Vectra and 3-Series as well as diesels and ethanol, has costs under control and produces good racing. Really, there's no need to look for a new solution. It's like having the key in your pocket but proceeding to pick the lock.

Super2000 is a nice set of rules and I actually prefer WTCC to DTM in its current state, but hell would freeze over before Aufrecht, Haug and Ullrich would turn DTM into an S2000-championship.

[flor]

They would rather turn it into some GT thing

[helgi]

S2000?Should I go to the shop,buy a car and go racing?Or should I take my grandfathers 2-litre saloon and go to the track? It's traffic light racing,as we call it in Russia. I can see them at the streets. Usuall BMWs,Chevrolets and other family cars.
If DTM disappear,only LMP will be Real Racing.
S2000 is cheap.So it's popular.But 20-laps races with not-modified cars..It's nonsence. Maybe I think so because I'm an engineer and want to see different interesting design decisions in racing.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by helgi

It's nonsence. Maybe I think so because I'm an engineer and want to see different interesting design decisions in racing.

Don't see a lot of those in a tubeframe class with a spec-this and a spec-that, like DTM. I'm not oppossed to tubeframers or Spec-parts, but the engineering side of it isn't that fantastic. I guess it's harder to turn a road car into a proper racer while keeping the original structure and design of the car, than building a clean-sheet prototype like a DTM-car. Of course you can spent ungodly amounts of money on the aero and the engine, but you could also do that on a production based car!

[Mr Revhead]

Originally Posted by FIRE

I am not convinced a DTM car is much safer as a NASCAR Cup car.

i dont think either are unsafe..... but i if i was going to hit a concrete wall at 300+ kmh id choose the NASCAR! but they are differnt cars designed for different tracks...

What about that V8 series they run in europe? that looks pretty cool
mildly modded V8 powered saloons, jag, BMW and audi. i certainly enjoy the odd snatch of coverage i spot on sattelite tv.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by Mr Revhead

What about that V8 series they run in europe? that looks pretty cool
mildly modded V8 powered saloons, jag, BMW and audi. i certainly enjoy the odd snatch of coverage i spot on sattelite tv.

Nope, my countrymen have a certain tendency towards: "We can do it better!" and "We want it as spectacular as possible".

An example: When they tried to introduce the road-tax for trucks over here, they didn't copy the reliable and proven Austrian system(buying stickers you put on your windscreen, which allow you to use their roads for a certain time), but developed some crazy pie-in-the-sky-GPS-based system that registers every movement of every truck. It was one year late when it finally entered service and it cost the trucking companys a boatload of money to buy these units for their vehicles.

What I mean to say: Italian Superstars cars are not spectacular enough for the general German public and they are invented by Italians.
That's not my opinion, I'd welcome them, but I'm pretty sure it would fail miserably.

[Go_For_Pole]

You make it sound like Superstars is a roaring sucess yet in reality it is an obscure series that nearly nobody cares for.

Anyway, in reality what is wrong with DTM is the minds of the people running the two works teams. No technical regulations will ever make Haug decide against spending 2m for a F1 reject or will stop the tasteless "strategies" of blocking by older cars.

[helgi]

As for S2000 rules.You can design a winning car only in case its road version is fast enough.(besides,this is a reason why we can not build racing Lada S2000.We had a great championship with deeply modified Ladas,that were much faster than touring BMWs ) What are they doing in World Touring to attract attention to their championship? They are playing with the Rules! Flat bottom for German,compression ratio for Korean etc. Is it fair play? And in DTM you have carte blanche. The Rules are similar for everybody. You have to design your car from the very beginning.And if you failed to take smth into account you are going to be a looser all the season.
But DTM tradition to follow F1 sport regulations is not clever at all.Two 100-km races were much better than modern 160-km single race.And they have spiced it with that foolish pit-stop system.But they have promissed to think how to solve the problem..

[Dead-Eye]

Originally Posted by helgi

As for S2000 rules.You can design a winning car only in case its road version is fast enough.

Which is the point of touring car racing. You have sportscars/prototypes where manufacturers can show who's best at building a purpose built race car from the ground up, and then there should be touring cars where you can see which production based car ist the fastest. The big problem with that is of course balancing and fitting different philosophies into the same set of rules, but I don't believe what's essentially a spec series is the answer.

[stedevil]

Originally Posted by helgi

We had a great championship with deeply modified Ladas,that were much faster than touring BMWs )

Well, every time I have seen a Russian TC car with a Russian driver in eg STCC or another international event they have pretty much been a mobile chicane for the other drivers. So maybe that is why TC cars seems so slow to you, Russians dont know how to drive them

[JAG]

Originally Posted by FIRE

Because Mercedes doesn't like 2L touring car racing...

2.5l WTCC like RWD cars, with no limits on the engines, other than production routes, sounds perfect.

Technically interesting, but real trouring cars.

[stedevil]

Originally Posted by JAG

2.5l WTCC like RWD cars... ... Technically interesting, but real trouring cars.

Considering 90%+ of all potential cars out there are FWD/4WD I think that format would be quite lackluster with very few participating manufacturers.

[werner]

Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, maybe in the near future Alfa Romeo is what I can think of. If they all would join it would be great, but I don't see that happening...

[helgi]

Has DTM become too expensive even for Europe again? If they have to transform it in a grand touring series it will be nothing special in it. Today it's something different to many-many TCCs. And it's a great advantage! Is it right when racing becomes similar in every Europe area?
Maybe you are fond of unification and etc. I don't understand it.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by helgi

Has DTM become too expensive even for Europe again?

If even Mercedes want to reduce their fleet to nine cars to save costs it obviously has. Think about what that tells us about the running costs for a car and the lack of true privateer-entries.
The only ones that can affort DTM are big factory teams, with a few "private" teams, that are really just semi-works-efforts themselves.

If they have to transform it in a grand touring series it will be nothing special in it.Today it's something different to many-many TCCs. And it's a great advantage!

Why? First and foremost it is especially expensive and at times especially boring due to the stupid aero.

Is it right when racing becomes similar in every Europe area?
Maybe you are fond of unification and etc. I don't understand it.

Similar rules safe the manufacturers a whole lot of money as they can design one car and sell it to several championships and provide the privateers with a nice selection of cars to choose from. Even if a manufacturer isn't involved in a certain country with an allout factory effort, the respective car can still show up there, like the Vauxhall that is hopefully going to race in Sweden this year.
Whereas for DTM, the cars can - with a few clubsport exceptions - only be raced in DTM and are insanely expensive. It is no surprise that no new manufacturers are joining DTM!

But: DTM is never going to go to the S2000 rules, either it will fold and a the german S2000 championship will replace it, or DTM will in one way or the other soldier on with their special set of rules. That's why I think DTM should create a privateer class, that allows for cheap vehicles from a wide selection of cars. As S2000 is too slow to run with DTM, a spec-class with manufacturer specific bodywork and engine is probably the best solution.

[stedevil]

Originally Posted by helgi

If they have to transform it in a grand touring series it will be nothing special in it.

It already IS A GT series. DTM has nothing in common with a TC car what so ever.
A DTM car is a purouse built GT sportscar with an outer plastic body shell that fakes the silhouette of a road car. You have to go back to the 1990ies DTM series to find a DTM car that actually was a TC car.

[PorscheFanNo1]

Originally Posted by stedevil

You have to go back to the 1990ies DTM series to find a DTM car that actually was a TC car.

And yet those cars where bending the defenition of a Touring Car.

[helgi]

But notice,you always talk about costs from the manufacturer's point of view.What solution is going to be cheaper - the main point in your posts.
And I'm talking as a spectator. Will you agree,that there are a lot of people that like to watch races with non-serial cars?Not GTs but Silhouettes.If you're rich enough,you can buy Aston and use it as a usual car.But you can not buy Audi R12plus.This car is made for racing only.And I want to watch the battle of racing cars. And the choice is limited now. DTM or LMP.
I don't dispute that it's more expensive. But tastes differ.

[Speed-King]

As i said before, I'm not oppossed to pure-bred silhouette cars, and racing will always be expensive, but the real question is: Expensive or ridiculously expensive. DTM is the later. And no one can tell me that spectacular racing cars have to be that expensive.
You know what a Porsche 935 (in some way the grandfather of modern DTM-cars) cost in the late 1970s? 140.000DM (= 70k €). Of course inflation is quite a huge factor, but even that doesn't account for the expensiveness of todays DTM cars.
The last season has shown us that a battle of two ten-car works-teams is a badly flawed concept, and now even the ten-car-teams seem to become too expensive for the manufacturers. Hence we need IMHO relatively affodable cars and an influx of privateer teams.

[flor]

the dtm isn't ridiculously expensive, you can run a 2 year old car for less than a competitive car in F3.

[stedevil]

Originally Posted by flor

the dtm isn't ridiculously expensive, you can run a 2 year old car for less than a competitive car in F3.

You can run a 2 year old car in F3 too, will cost you less, but as for being competitive... Same applies for DTM, you aint going to be DTM champion in a 2 year old car.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by flor

the dtm isn't ridiculously expensive, you can run a 2 year old car for less than a competitive car in F3.

With the huge difference that a competitive ride in F3 can help your career immensly, whereas if you end up in a two year old DTM car your carreer is pretty much over and even a top-10-finish is almost out of reach, if not for a lot of good luck.

That's why I call for a 2nd division in DTM, it would give those, who are not fortunate enough to get a ride in one of the new cars, the possibility to actually race for a class victory instead of a meaningless fourteenth place. And maybe help them to get noticed by teams higher up on the ladder...

And it would also eliminate the use of old cars as mobile roadblocks!

[Dead-Eye]

But then you'd have 8 works cars who contest for the win and 10 actual mobile chicanes for them, creating an even bigger gap. And it probably won't be easy to get the average viewer to notice the second class winner at all.

I can't really see a solution though. A way to curb costs and make the series attractive for privateers would be S2000, but that doesn't work too well if manufacturers want to show off their big engines...anything bigger and it gets expensive.
Maybe taking inspiration from the 90s rules wouldn't be too bad. A kind of S3000...front, rear or 4-wheel drive (with weight penalties of course) and production based engines of up to 3000cc or turbos (diesel x1.5, petrol x1.7 = 1.8 litres for petrol turbos and 2.0 for diesels). You'd need strict homologation rules and probably as many spec parts as possible to keep cost down.
Basically relax S2000 enought to let manufacturers who don't care for 2 litre four bangers in, make the cars a bit more exciting but still cheap enough for privateers.

[stedevil]

Now that sounds like a smart new ruleset to make DTM again be an interesting TC series. Might even develop into a good WTCC S3000 series