Deutsche Touringwagen Masters has been through some hard years regarding spectators at the track and also viewers at the TVs around the world.
You have to look a long way back until you totally filled grand stands at both the season start and season finale at Hockenheim.
The opening round of 2016 had great weather, but still far from every seat sold out, and 2017 was plagued by bad weather, and visually only maximum 75% of the seats in the Main Grandstand in use, on top of many of the outer sections closed off, just like in the latter years. On top of that, the Mercedes Grandstand is not longer in use for DTM, and no tickets for grass areas without seats are sold.
Fortunately there was a lot more spectators at the season finale 2017, with nice and sunny weather and more than 20 degrees.
Mercedes-AMG dropped the bomb in July 2017, announcing that they would leave DTM after 2018. That send shock waves though the whole DTM paddock, especially since the starting grids had already been reduced ahead of this season to only 6 cars per constructor, scaling down from 8 though the last five seasons. With both Audi and BMW either having or starting up their of Formula E programmes, DTM could very shortly be in a dire need for cars after 2018.
The TV contract for DTM with their German host broadcasters was also up at the end of 2017. Since Year 2000, all DTM races has been shown on ARD or some of their other network channels, but they have apparently opted not to sign up for a new period. There was no “Thank You for 2017, see You again in 2018” when they finished off their broadcast from Hockenheim last weekend. It’s important for all the manufacturers to be on national terrestrial free-tv, and all three are currently pushing very hard for the DTM series and ARD to continue their collaboration.
The DTM series themselves have been through times of changes too in the management. Gerherd Berger stepped into the board before the start of the season, but so far there hasn’t been any major changes – at least not seen to the public.
Things have escalated at Mercedes this week. Robert Wickens announced his departure to Indycar on Wednesday. Edoardo Mortara and Maro Engel announced on Friday that they would do FIA Formula E Championship for Venturi. The Formula E calendar hasn’t been announced yet, so if there is any date clashes in 2018, it’s not yet known.
A fourth driver at Mercedes is also looking towards a different championship. Paul Di Resta has already had one start for Williams F1 in 2017, and he is flirting with the team regarding a 2018 full season drive. If he leaves too, there might only be Lucas Auer, who is the nephew of Gerhard Berger, and Gary Paffett left on the team. Both have been doing GT races too, with Auer having a few starts in ADAC GT Masters and even a win at the Nürburgring this year. With 3-4 potential empty DTM seats, it might end up being now, that Mercedes pulls out – one year early.
DTM and Super GT have been flirting with each other over the last few years, but currently there is a major difference in both tires and engines. Lexus and Nissan was invited to Hockenheim last weekend, where they ran some exhibition, and were way faster than the usual DTM cars – without any testing or setup work at the track prior to the weekend! But of course both manufacturers would have done a lot of simulation back in Japan, since it’s very prestigious of them to show at least the same pace as the usual DTM teams. The big question is, what is the incitement for Lexus, Nissan and Honda to ship cars to Germany, and for BMW and Audi to send cars to Japan. Because if they want to work together, it has to go both ways.
The coming weeks will be very important for the DTM future. There is no doubt that the DTM cars are some of the most exciting cars, that you can find with a roof on in Europe, but with yearly budgets of around 50 Million Euros per constructor (!), it’s is a very expensive marketing exercise, especially when all three already have GT programmes running in Germany – run by privateers on a semi-works basis – and on top of that, currently have or soon will have a Formula E team each too.
We are really looking forward to the news in the coming weeks fro them ITR office in Stuttgart.