DTM

[nzjrs]

Last weekend was one of the dirtiest things I've seen in Motorsport.

[Scorpaguy]

Unfortunately, it is now only about being able to place a full-color, half-page advertisement titled "2021 Champions" whilst a few rich blokes drink filtered water atop an incredibly expensive (and hideously colored) Merc.

Sportsmanship and honor cannot be found in upper echelon ranks...only about the opportunities for cash.
The idiots that are impressed by such ads likely never watched a lap in the entire season.

[gshevlin]

The events at this weekend's event leave the DTM with a credibility problem.
They had one driver attack another driver from a different zip code and get a 5 second time penalty for wrecking his race.
Then two different teams (run by the same manufacturer) imposed team orders on their drivers so that one of them could win the championship.
To call this a farce would be an insult to theatrical farces.
To top it all off, Kelvin Van Der Linde (he who attacked Liam Lawson from a different zip code) is talking smack like a high school kid with a surfeit of mouth and a severe deficit of brain. He sounds like the second coming of Dan Ticktum at present (which is not a good thing).
It will be interesting what the DTM does going forward.
What they do (or don't do) could make or break the series. Do we think that Red Bull Ferrari are going to continue after what happened? They don't exactly need the DTM, and the money they are spending is a rounding error on Deitrich Mateschitz's balance sheet.

[RZS10]

Keep in mind that DTM always used to be a manufacturer series and teams of the same manufacturer have been playing tactical games throughout this and previous seasons, sometimes more and sometimes less obviously, remember when Audi told one of their drivers to take out the Merc title contender? That stuff isn't anything new, really.

The series has bigger issues than just the season finale.

[gshevlin]

Yes, I do remember that. It might be part of the reason why the DTM steadily declined until it was on life-support. The main reason being that it was ferociously expensive, and far from a level playing field, with teams fielding two or three specs of cars. Drivers of older-spec cars basically had no chance of ever coming close to a win, and were really there to make up the numbers. Your only chance of winning consistently was to be a manufacturer factory driver with the manufacturer's top-spec car.
The move to "stock" GT3 machinery was meant to level the playing field and reduce the influence of manufacturers, but based on the past weekend, some old habits die hard.

[basti313]

The move to "stock" GT3 machinery was meant to level the playing field and reduce the influence of manufacturers, but based on the past weekend, some old habits die hard.

Well, for this they would have needed to close the regs a bit more. Look at my post from February, it was obvious from the beginning. A bit later Merc announced a part truck and data sharing among the teams
To me it is even surprising how well Ferrari played it (it=BOP ).

Next year with competitive BMWs and hopefully a similar approach will be more interesting...hopefully. But mostly I hope they limit a bit the factory Merc approach.

This weekend was not good. The meltdown of KVL, which started in Hockenheim, was not good for anyone. The team orders was crazy. The penalties were the worst example I ever saw in motorsports...it was not even the 5sec for the T-Bone, but they also dropped 5sec penalties for one handed tire lifting, that you could not even spot in the replay...

[gshevlin]

The biggest challenge that many top like racing series have is that they become so introverted that they (a) think that any action is a good one if there is no rule against it (b) they have no understanding of how their actions and the actions of the series are perceived by the outside world.
Another way of putting this (a) it's not cheating if there is no rule against it or if you don't get caught (b) they live in a bubble.
The DTM (some teams and at least one driver) showed that they live in a bubble this past weekend.

[nzjrs]

It's crazy because once you see the onboard from KVL it's already clearly an intentional move to take out his opponent, and that's without even knowing he did something similar in race 1!

[nacho]

It was a very stupid move, if in DTM the track limits are the white lines van Der Linde leaves the track and crashes into Lawson from outside of the track.

[RZS10]

Ironically that was what he got the penalty for, unsafely rejoining the track, not for causing a collision.

The way they handed out penalties was an inconsistent mess throughout the season, some drivers got away with spinning others, some were slapped with penalties for small contacts.

[gshevlin]

The only way you modify the behavior of competitors who behave badly is to deny them the opportunity to compete. Reprimands and penalty points are just slappie-handies, and fines will be seen as merely part of the cost of competing.
If the DTM wants to prevent drivers from running rivals off the track, they need to black-flag the driver immediately, and, if they conclude that the action was deliberate, suspend them from the whole of the next weekend event. And if they try to appeal and the appeal is frivolous, double the suspension. As a general rule, I am in favor of penalizing a driver to the same extent as any damage that driver inflicted on another driver in the race. If you punt another driver out of the race, out of the race you go as a punishment.
As for team orders...those are difficult to police at the best of times, as we have seen in Formula 1. However, blatantly re-arranging the finishing order of a race, which is what happened last weekend, can arguably be defined as an action that brings the series into disrepute. Most racing series have a blanket rule against any behavior that brings the sport or the series into disrepute, and the penalties are usually severe.

[vorticism]

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com ... ipo=images
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/G8udY7BttSg/maxresdefault.jpg

https://racemotor.com.br/wp-content/upl ... extgen.jpg

Very similar construction method that DTM were running when they went ‘full silhouette’.

Speaking of...

[vorticism]

[vorticism]

[AMG.Tzan]

Used to be such a nice championship!

GT3 rules destroyed it…a real shame they didn’t manage to merge DTM and Super GT into a worldwide championship! It would have been epic…

Any idea why the reported joint race between the two back in somewhere 2017-2019 never happened?