GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT
After 30 winning years (1988-2018), Mercedes-Benz steps away from the German Touring Car Championship (DTM)
ARTICLE – Glenn Freeman
IMAGES – Mercedes-AMG Motorsports • Daimler Archives
Perfect goodbyes are rare in motorsport, but at the final race of the 2018 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters series at the Hockenheimring in Germany, Mercedes-AMG drove into the sunset clutching all the end-of-season trophies available: the Drivers’ title with Gary Paffett, plus the Teams’ and Manufacturers’ championships. This was the team’s last race in DTM competition.
But walking away from the racing series doesn’t feel right in many respects; since joining DTM as a manufacturer entry in 1988, Mercedes-AMG has been the ever-present force. Even when the series morphed into the high-tech, super-expensive International Touring Car Championship (ITC) in the mid-1990s and subsequently collapsed, Mercedes was the one manufacturer that didn’t want to walk away; hence its switch to the FIA GT championship and a return to Le Mans in the intervening years of the late 1990s. And when its former sporting boss Hans Werner Aufrecht wanted to bring the series back to life for 2000, Mercedes stood right behind him in full support.
Early years
The initial foray in ’88 was the result of a desire to inject a sporty image back into the perception of Mercedes-Benz as a road-car brand, an idea that was pushed hard by then-new board member Jürgen Hubbert following his promotion in 1987. He would become a regular participant in all of Mercedes-Benz motorsport achievements in the years that followed.
A DTM program offered a chance to maximize publicity for the 190E model, which had enjoyed terrific exposure earlier in the decade when Ayrton Senna won an exhibition race against several star names from F1 to mark the opening of the new Nürburgring GP circuit in 1984. The DTM series aimed to deliver that kind of promotional value on a regular basis.
When Mercedes joined the competition, DTM was still in its infancy: Huge grids of manufacturer-backed superstar drivers contested against ambitious amateurs in equipment that couldn’t match the might of the factories. But as the 1990s took hold, so did the powerhouse works teams; Mercedes was at the forefront of that, building enough road-legal versions of its 190 “Evo” (Evolution) models to meet the homologation requirements that allowed the car to race – and prompting Hubbert to reflect earlier this year, “When I look at the spoiler, I still cannot understand how it ever got approval for use on the road!”
Down to business
By 1990, Mercedes had restructured its motorsport department under the control of former journalist Norbert Haug. Haug was a big supporter of the DTM program both before and after the mid-1990s collapse. He spread himself far and wide, attending Formula 1 and DTM races, and he always relished being a part of the DTM paddock. When Haug left and was replaced by current Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff at the top of the tree, Wolff felt the DTM needed its own management structure to allow him to focus on F1: Mercedes-AMG chose Ulrich Fritz to lead the DTM team.
From the beginning, Haug understood the importance of motorsport as a marketing tool and pioneered the expansive hospitality units that would become the norm in the 21st century: Mercedes’s involvement in the DTM largely focused around promotion throughout its 30 years of competing. Yes, in the early years there was the technological development of the 190E and then the C-Class, but when the series was reborn, the aim was to keep technology simple to ensure costs were controlled. Given the speed at which new developments to benefit road cars could be produced and perfected, the series was placed firmly in manufacturers’ marketing departments, which by the 21st century were making it a habit of funding other racing programs out of research and development budgets.
It took two years for a Haug-led Mercedes to finally triumph over a DTM season. In 1992, Klaus Ludwig took the 190E 2.5-16 Evo 2 to the title, Mercedes won 16 of 24 races, and its drivers filled five of the top-six positions in the championship. The three-pointed star had arrived.
Storm clouds
By this point, the DTM technical regulations were about to get out of hand: Class 1 rules were introduced for 1993. A 2.5- liter engine displacement was permitted and, even today, series chiefs describe the modifications allowed for engine, chassis and aerodynamics as “very liberal.” Alfa Romeo stole a march, quickly proving just how far the rules could be pushed. Mercedes hit back a year later with a monstrous C-Class as the series entered the ITC era. The race schedule expanded globally (seven of 13 rounds were outside of Germany, with events as far afield as Brazil and Japan) and spiraling costs due to the loose technical regulations created a financial ticking time bomb that would not survive the ’90s.
‘Mr. DTM’
Mercedes won one more title in 1995 before the ITC’s collapse at the end of 1996, with ex-Formula 1 driver Bernd Schneider winning the first of what would become five championships. While Schneider became known as “Mr. DTM” for his success in the series, that first championship in ’95 came at one of the lowest points of his racing career.
“One of my most disappointing moments was when Michael Schumacher got the Jordan F1 drive in 1991 [for the Belgian Grand Prix], and I replaced him in DTM,” Schneider recalled. “This was the moment I knew that my F1 career was finished, which was hard because since I was five years old, my dream was to drive in Formula 1 and be world champion. But I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I never believed I would have such a career.”
Schneider started life in the new DTM with back-to-back titles driving the CLK-DTM in 2000-01, winning again with a new coupe model in 2003. A year later, Audi’s full factory team re-entered the action, and the series switched back to sedan-based designs. For Mercedes, that meant bringing back the C-Class, by far the most successful model in DTM history with 85 victories – more than half (53 percent) of the races it competed in.
By now, the V-8 engines had nothing in common with anything found under the hood of a road car. Mercedes took the unique approach in the mid-2000s of creating an eight-into-one exhaust, giving its cars a high-pitched “scream” compared with the deeper roar produced by conventional exhausts. It was just one example of how the motorsports department tried to innovate in an era of ever more restrictive regulations, as was the mass shock absorber it developed – later outlawed. Mercedes claimed the device was not meant to be performance enhancing, but designed to control cars “porpoising” on the straights, a phenomenon caused by aerodynamics pushing the front of the car down so far at high speed that the springs in the suspension would fully compress and then force the car back up – a shockingly visible example of just how much downforce the cars of the modern DTM series were developing by this time.
Star power
If the technology could no longer be the star of the show in the DTM as it had been so successfully in the 1990s, then Mercedes looked to make waves in the series by other means, including signing big names to the series. Jean Alesi stepped right out of F1 into a Mercedes CLK-DTM for 2002, becoming a winner in his first season, while two-time world champion Mika Häkkinen joined from 2005-07. Fellow F1 race winners Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard would follow.
New rules, old rivals
The sedans lasted until 2012. Mercedes introduced a new DTM model for 2007 to tie in with the commercial release of the W204 C-Class. For 2012, there were new rules yet again: engines, transmissions and drivetrains stayed the same, but coupes were back, and so was BMW – for the first time since the early 1990s.
Manufacturers were now using identical carbon-fiber monocoques as efforts continued to keep costs down and prevent a development race from breaking out. Restrictions continued throughout Mercedes’s remaining years, resulting in simpler aerodynamics, closer racing between cars, and preventing minor contact from causing big losses of performance – as was the case in the previous decade when F1 levels of aero flicks and devices attached to the cars readily fell off at the slightest contact.
This is the end
As Mercedes-AMG’s F1 team became the dominant force at the pinnacle of global motorsport, the Swabian company’s DTM program had to make do with the role of little brother. Prior to this year, the team had only won one Drivers’ championship since Paul di Resta’s 2010 success, with Pascal Wehrlein becoming the series’ youngest champion in 2015 before he followed di Resta’s path of using the DTM as a stepping stone to F1 – and subsequently returning. In fact, the Mercedes motorsports division always made a point of trying to build new stars in the DTM, often using its links via its Formula 3 engine project of the 2000s to unearth new talent. Di Resta’s promotion for 2007 followed similar deals for Paffett, Jamie Green, Bruno Spengler and countless others who would go on to win races and/or championships in the DTM.
Clearly, the DTM series was always primarily a marketing exercise for Mercedes-Benz. However, the company’s dominance on the world stage in F1 racing is taking care of that – and consuming a considerable amount of the budget as well. The technological development battle between manufacturers now takes place in the electric playground of Formula E, which Mercedes-Benz will join for the 2019-20 season in a bid to further the prominence of its EQ technology. Against that backdrop – and with its GT Customer Racing making economic sense – DTM simply got crowded out.
Mercedes ends its 30-year DTM journey with three-pointed stars left all over the record books, winning 11 Drivers’ titles and 190 races. During those three decades, the firm built cars complying with various rules packages and stayed loyal to the DTM through its best days – and its worst. Had it not offered such strong support for the series’ rebirth in 2000, stayed strong with Audi or supplied 50 percent of the cars in the years between Opel quitting at the end of 2005 and BMW’s 2012 return, there wouldn’t have been a DTM to walk away from today.
At the Hochenheimring in October 2018, Gary Paffett (No.2) celebrates winning the 2018 DTM Drivers’ Championship in the 436th and final DTM race for Mercedes-AMG Motorsport.
In January 1990 at the circuit Zolder in Belgium, Klaus Ludwig at the weheel of a Mercedes-AMG Motorsport 190E 2.5-16-Evolution racing tour car. Ludwig would win the DTM championship in 1992.
At the 200 Miles of the Nürburgring of 1989: A pair of 190E 2.5-16 Evolution racing cars in the mercedes-AMG Motorsport Pits.
In 1995, the DTM joined the International Touring Car Series (ITC). Mercedes-Benz fielded an updated Mercedes-AMG C-Class racing touring car with relocated driver’s seat and a unitized body with integrated rollover cage. Donington Gold Cup (ITC), Donington, England, July 1995. A trio of Mercedes-AMG C-Class racing touring cars leads an Alfa Romeo.
ABOVE: Bernd Schneider at the Alemannenring in September 1995. Schneider clinched both the DTM and ITC championships; Mercedes-AMG took the Manufacturers’ titles in both racing series.
At the June 2002 Norisring Speed Weekend, Bernd Schneider, (Vodafone AMG-Mercedes), contests the lead with Laurent Aïello, (Abt-Audi TT-R). Schneider finished in second place
At the DTM race on the Hockenheimring in April 2004, race winner Gary Paffett (C-Class Vodafone AMG-Mercedes) leads Bernd Schneider (C-Class Vodafone AMG-Mercedes).
An action-packed 2016 Hockenheimring pit stop for Paul di Resta, (Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM).
On a wet Hockenheimring track in April 2003, race winner Bernd Schneider (Vodafone AMG-Mercedes) out in front of Jean Alesi (Mercedes-AMG).
Title treble: Mercedes-AMG Motorsport won the 2018 Drivers’, Team and Manufacturers’ championships. Gary Paffett (Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport) finished third in Mercedes-AMG Motorsport’s very last race in the DTM at the Hockenheimring to secure his second DTM title.
“Thank you, DTM, for 30 strong years”– Paul di Resta (Mercedes-AMG Motorsport REMUS), who finished in third place overall in the Drivers’ standings, salutes the DTM.
Fans surround Paffett’s championship-winning car at the Hockenheimring.