Audi expecting tough competition in the 2016 DTM season
The start of the 2016 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters season is just a handful of days away, with the season kicking off at Hockenheim this weekend. Audi Sport expects the fight for the title to be a tight challenge this year.
The Ingolstadt manufacturer was the strongest outfit last season winning ten out of 18 races. Despite posing a strong challenge, with three drivers holding mathematical options for the title right until the last round of the season, Audi Sport ended the year crownless and returned home empty handed.
The preparations for the 2016 season have been intensive, with the RS 5 DTM having been the car with most mileage completed at the two collective pre-season tests in Monteblanco and Hockenheim. The DTM competitors are also welcome by a number of rule changes in pursuit of a fairer and more entertaining season. “At Audi Sport, we’re excited to see what effects the fine-tuning of the regulations will have as well,” explains Dieter Gass, Head of DTM at Audi Sport. “The winter was long, but productive and we’re expecting an extremely close field.”
The performance weights’ rules have been thoroughly revised, with the extra weight for each race being now calculated according to the qualifying results. “I believe this year the relative strengths are no longer going to shift as much from race to race and there’ll be more intermixing of the Brands”, Team Rosberg driver Jamie Green affirms.
Audi Sport heads for the last season of the homologation freeze with an unchanged driver line up for the third year straight and a slight driver reshuffle among the teams as the main novelty, hoping to maximise the synergies within the squad in order to not lose trail of the title fight. For Dieter Gass, there is only one road ahead: “It will be a challenging season in which you can’t afford to lose sight of any detail or have a bad patch if you want to win the title.”
The numbers are in favour of Audi Sport, as the Ingolstadt manufacturer has won the last five races held in Hockenheim. Despite painstaking preparations during the winter, Gass is weary of the competition: “We prepared ourselves well and had four productive test days at Hockenheim in early April, among other things. But everyone knows how close the competition is in the DTM. We’re only going to see the relative strengths in qualifying on Saturday.”
Team Abt Sportsline’s Mattias Ekström will face a double commitment this weekend, as he will be switching machines and programmes between the DTM and his participation in the second round of the World Rallycross Championship. The Swede is excited about the new season: “Even after 15 DTM years, the first qualifying session of the season is really special.”
The teams and pairings at Audi Sport for the 2015 DTM season are as follows:
Team Abt
#17 Miguel Molina
#51 Nico Müller
Team Abt Sportsline
#5 Mattias Ekström
#48 Edoardo Mortara
Team Phoenix
#99 Mike Rockenfeller
#10 Timo Scheider
Team Rosberg
#53 Jamie Green
#27 Adrien Tambay
The 2016 DTM season kicks off in Hockenheim this Friday, with the first free practice session taking place at 17:00 CET.
