Italian warmth in Saturday’s DTM race

DTM headed to Italy for the fifth and sixth rounds on Misano circuit, southeast of Bologna. The race on Saturday was run under sunshine and warmth. Opposed to last year, the races this weekend would be run in the afternoon as usual. Rene Rast had taken Pole Position, in a pure Audi show. Jonathan Aberdein, Loic Duval and Robin Frijns were P2 to P4, before Sheldon van der Linde as the best BMW driver. Jake Dennis was the best Aston Martin in P13, right in front of his teammate Daniel…

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Fittipaldi will do Misano after all

Pietro Fittipaldi will be doing the DTM race at Misano after all, this coming weekend. The Brazilian wasn’t scheduled to do the race for WRT Team Audi Sport, since he was going to be on reserve driver duty for HAAS F1 Team. So it was announced several weeks ago, that Andrea Dovizioso would race in the car instead, for this single weekend. But Audi Sport Team Rosberg has run into a problem – or in fact an appendicitis issue for Jamie Green, which he needed surgery for. So he is…

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Late Safety Car created extra action at Zolder

The qualifying to the fourth round of the 2019 DTM season was run at Zolder track in Belgium. Sheldon van der Linde had taken Pole Position, in his only fourth DTM race, ahead of Rene Rast, yesterday’s winner Philipp Eng, Robin Frijns, and Timo Glock. It was yet another good mixed starting grid with BMW, Audi, BMW, Audi and BMW. The race would unfortunately be without Paul Di Resta, since the R-Motorsport team had some technical problems in the qualifying and chose not to start the Aston Martin car. Just…

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Belgium welcomed back DTM

The third round of this season’s DTM was run on the Belgian Zolder, in nice 26 degrees air temperature. It was the first time since 2002 that the series were back to the track – and actually it was the place where the DTM series started in 1984. Since then DTM had visited Spa Francorchamps, but they primarily drove in the Netherlands, where the Zandvoort circuit was close by. The weather for the race on Saturday was perfectly sunny, and championship leader Marco Wittmann used it to his advantage to…

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MotoGP star will get DTM start

There will be one special driver on the track, when the DTM visits Italian Misano on 8-9 June. MotoGP star Andrea Dovizioso will be racing for WRT Team Audi Sport, since Pietro Fittipaldi has to be in Canada that weekend, in regards to his reserve driver role at HAAS F1 Team. Dovizioso usually races for Ducati in MotoGP, which is a company under the same VAG umbrella as Audi. It’s still a bit of a strange choice, since a DTM car isn’t something you just jump into, and then being…

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Dry Sunday race at Hockenheim

Unlike the DTM race on Saturday, the teams were greeted by dry asphalt for the Sunday race. Philipp Eng had taken Pole Position ahead of yesterday’s winner, Marco Wittmann. Robin Frijns was the best non-BMW driver in P3, right in front of his teammate Nico Müller, while we had to go down to P14 to find the best Aston Martin in the shape of Daniel Juncadella. Rene Rast would start the race all the way back in P16 due to technical problems in qualifying, where the car suddenly stopped during…

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A wet start of the DTM season

The 2019 season in Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters was started on a very wet Hockenheimring. Marco Wittmann had taken Pole Position ahead of Mike Rockenfeller and Paul Di Resta. Thus it was BMW, Audi and Aston Martin in the first three places. They were followed by a couple of Audi drivers with Rene Rast and Robin Frijns, before Jake Dennis qualified another Aston in top six. Philipp Eng unfortunately didn’t qualify due to technical problems with the car. He would start from the back of the grid. Jonathan Aberdein had to…

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DTM cars 2019

The DTM series had their final collective test at Lausitzring, ahead of the season start at Hockenheim in two weeks’ time. Here’s a picture of each of the cars running at the test. Pietro Fittipaldi wasn’t at the track, so we refer to the graphics that the team released at his announcement. BMW had only brought three of their six liveries to the track, but had also released the design of Joel Eriksson’s car. R-Motorsport with the Aston Martin cars, had brought two of their four cars for this test.…

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DTM 2019 field complete

All 18 DTM drivers for the 2019 season have now been announced. The final driver was revealed today, with Pietro Fittipaldi joining Audi Sport Team WRT. He’ll be teammates with Jonathan Aberdein. WRT is a new name in the DTM sport, but certainly not at Audi Sport. WRT has their base in Belgium, and has raced with Audi cars for nearly ten years, with the R8 LMS GT3 being the primary car, but more recently also the RS 3 LMS TCR car. They have been allowed to run two Audi…

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DTM and SUPER GT confirms common races

There have been talks for a long time, but the dates are finally confirmed. DTM and SUPER GT will meet at two race meetings in 2019. The first time will be at the DTM season finale at Hockenheim on 5-6 October, where Honda, Lexus and Nissan will send one car each, to participate in the DTM race. DTM will go to Japan on 23-24 November, where a common non-championship race with SUPER GT will be held at Fuji International Speedway. DTM promises at least 12 cars on the trip. If…

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Aston Martin has done their first meters

R-Motorsport has done the first laps in their brand new Aston Martin DTM car. Paul Di Resta left the pits on Monday afternoon, to do a few laps on the Jerez circuit in the south of Spain. There has been 90 days of development of the car – with the small asterisk, that the car is based on the Mercedes chassis, that R-Motorsport partner HWA built for the German brand. The two cars have some similarities, but have a significantly different front bumper, in the characteristic Aston Martin Vantage shape,…

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R-Motorsport with 4 cars

They will be very busy in the south of Germany and the northern part of Switzerland the next few months. R-Motorsport will not only enter two DTM cars, but four cars at the start of the season at Hockenheim in May. Ferdinand Habsburg and Daniel Juncadella will join Paul Di Resta and Jake Dennis, who was announced last week. At that point, it only sounded like two cars from the start, but that has been doubled to four now. Habsburg is 21 years old and born in Austria. He is…

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First Aston Martin drivers announced

R-Motorsport has announced the first two Aston Marting driver for the 2019 DTM season. The Swiss team has been allowed to call the DTM cars, which are developed by HWA, for Aston Martin. The programme is purely private, and has nothing to do with the manufacturer itself. The team has opted to go for experience and youth. The 2010 DTM Champion Paul Di Resta was announced this morning, while the talented Jake Dennis was announced later in the day. HWA knows Di Resta very well, since he has been driving…

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Audi goes to Lanzarote

Audi Sport has had their works drivers on a small trip to Lanzarote. But this wasn’t pure holiday, even though the weather was perfect for it, but their now legendary fitness week. This was the fourth time that the team had gone for Club La Santa, where Tom Kristensen and the team physio Vincenzo Tota had planned a week of secret activities for the 8 works drivers in DTM and Formula E. Loic Duval, Robin Frijns, Jamie Green, Nico Müller, Rene Rast, Mike Rockenfeller, Lucas Di Grassi and Daniel Abt…

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Recently retired Schnitzer BMW Team principal Charly Lamm dies suddenly at the age of 63

Only two months after his retirement as team principal of the Schnitzer BMW Team – right after the Macau Grand Prix which Augusto Farfus won for Schnitzer in a BMW M6 GT3 – Charly (Karl) Lamm has died rather suddenly at the age of 63 years on Thursday January 24th, 2019, after a very short but severe illness. Photo: BMW Motorsport This news today has put a large part of the motorsport world in shock and sadness.  Team Schnitzer, BMW Motorsport, drivers, fans, and even BMW’s competitors, issued statements on…

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ROWE RACING to compete with 2 Porsche 911 GT3 R in the 24 Hours of Spa and in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup 2019

The German team ROWE RACING announced this week that they will return to the Spa 24 Hours race on July 27th-28th, 2019 – the place of their biggest successes, with a victory in 2016 and 2nd place in 2018 – with two Porsche 911 GT3 R, and six Porsche works drivers and Porsche Young Professionals.  The driver line up for one of the Porsche 911 GT3 R in Spa will be Le Mans Winner Nick Tandy (Great Britain) together with 2 French drivers, Frédéric Makowiecki and Patrick Pilet.  The second…

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DTM turns up the wick

DTM 2019 will be the fastest season in the 35 years of series history. As previously mentioned on Racing24-7.net, there will be new cars and new engines. While the cars basically looks the same – at least a few metres away, there will be a totally different type of engine in the cars. A two litres, four cylinders turbo engine will produce just over 600 bhp, and with the minimum weight going down to just 981 kg excluding the driver, things will really be spiced up. That gives a power…

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Sheldon van der Linde new DTM driver

History will be made in DTM, when the season starts at Hockenheim in May 2019. Sheldon van der Linde has signed a deal with BMW Motorsport, and will be the first South African driver in the series, in its 35-year long history. The only 19 year-old racing driver has taken the jump from an Audi seat in the ADAC GT Masters amongst other things, where he most recently has been driving with his brother Kelvin at Montaplast by Land-Motorsport. So it was a bit of a surprise, when his name…

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No DTM night race in 2019

DTM has once again made some small adjustments to the weekend schedule, when the 2019 season starts on the first weekend of May. All the races during the season will start at 13.30 local time, which only will give an impact on the starting time for the European viewers, when the series goes to Brands Hatch, which will be on 14.30 European time. That results in the series going away from that night race, that was held in Misano in Italy in 2018. It gave a different feeling for the…

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No changes at Audi

There will be no changes at Audi Sport, when the 2019 DTM season starts in May. Loic Duval, Robin Frijns, Jamie Green, Nico Müller plus the two DTM champions Mike Rockenfeller and Rene Rast will once again race for the German team. It’s still Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline, Team Phoenix and Team Rosberg running the six cars. There will be a slight change, however, just like that the opposition from BMW and Aston Martin, will have to go for the new and more power full turbo engines. The six…

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