New Race Format for DTM

20 April 2003

After its dramatic re-birth a few years ago, and its return to the UK at Donington Park in 2002, DTM, the German Touring Car Championship has a had a reshuffle of the rules to make things more exciting.

The most significant change in the regulations concerns the race format: the races will be approximately 160 kilometres long, instead of the 100 so far. For the Norisring, this results into a race distance of 72 laps. And the 44 laps in previous years already were highly exciting for the spectators, and extremely demanding for drivers and cars. The pit stops will be adding plenty of excitement as well. From 2003, two pit stops per car are compulsory. Changing of the Dunlop tyres during both stops is mandatory and refuelling is not only allowed – but the DTM cars will have to refuel at least once. Refuelling stops are new in the DTM, team tactics and strategy are more important than ever.

According to its new format, qualifying on Saturday starts with a 20 minutes’ timed practice. This decides on the line-up of the starting grid from eleventh place onwards and the running order of the hunt for pole position. After a ten minutes’ break, the ten fastest drivers will be out within 30 minutes for a single flying lap, the “Super Pole”. The fastest driver from timed practice will be the last one out on the track.

The championship points system for the drivers, based on the Formula 1 system, is also new (points for first to eighth place 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1), just like the manufacturers’ championship. Here, all cars of a manufacturer are being considered according to the points scheme of the drivers’ championship. In order to further reduce the costs, technical regulations only allow three engines for any two drivers in 2003, rather than four engines thus far. All cars have rear-wheel drive and V8-engines with a capacity of four litres. Many materials and components are standard, electronic driver aids are forbidden. DTM-tyre partner Dunlop is supplying all the teams with the same tyre specification.

See series calendar for DTM - German Touring Car Championship 2003