DTM – BMW fears soaring costs

Audi looks set to clinch all three titles at the final of the DTM contested this weekend at Hockenheim. The first four drivers in the Drivers' Championship are in fact racing on RS 5 DTMs while the first two teams in the Teams ranking are also hit by the Rings. Audi also has a clear lead over its opponents in the Manufacturers' Championship.

If BMW maintains a mathematical chance of winning the Drivers' title with Marco Wittmann, fifth, 38 points behind leader Mattias Ekström, the Propeller manufacturer risks not winning the slightest coronation, which would be a first since its return to DTM in 2012.

Jens Marquardt, the director of BMW Motorsport, believes that Audi's domination can be explained by the end of its LM P1 program in WEC which made it possible to obtain more resources in DTM.

“We saw the real performance in the 2017 season with the cancellation of ballasts in recent races, comments Jens Marquardt. This revealed a fundamental problem that the DTM has with its two-year homologation cycle. If the differences evolve and corrections such as ballast are no longer taken into account, that is not in the public interest. »

With cancellation of ballast during the season established before the meeting of the Red Bull Ring (Austria), performance gaps are widening. The brand with the Rings actually scored a hat-trick in the two races held at Spielberg while BMW barely placed an M4 DTM in the top five of Race 1 with Marco Wittmann.

“There are three options, suggests Jens Marquardt. The weights helped balance the forces but we decided to remove them in the interest of discipline. The other two manufacturers (Mercedes and BMW) could increase their resources to reduce their delay, but this would generate a race for technology as we saw in F1 or in LM P1. However, this is out of the question in DTM because we have agreed on homologation cycles. The last approach consists of standardizing certain elements invisible to the public and reducing aero elements. This would provide many positive effects by improving the quality of racing and reducing costs. »

The future of the DTM remains uncertain with the planned withdrawal of Mercedes in 2019 which will leave only two manufacturers in the discipline. However, Jens Marquardt admitted that BMW Motorsport could have achieved better results this year if it had made fewer mistakes.

“We cannot afford to lose 25 points because there is half a liter missing from the tank as was the case in Zandvoort (Netherlands)”, recalled Jens Marquardt, referring to the exclusion of Marco Wittmann who won Race 2 before being downgraded for an insufficient quantity of fuel checked on his BMW.