Photo: DTM Media

Mercedes has been “pushing like hell” to get rid of performance weight rules

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The performance weight rules has been a cause of division among the DTM partners, with Mercedes and ITR’s head Gerhard Berger in favour of abolishing the system, whilst BMW and Audi would prefer to keep it.

The year started with a performance weight regulation based on qualifying performance, to then move to a race performance based system for the third round of the season at the Hungaroring. After some manufacturers played with their lap times in order to take advantage of the system, a new tweak of the regulations was drafted ahead of the fifth round at Moscow, only to be scrapped a few hours later.

Gary Paffett and Robert Wickens have spoken about how Mercedes hasn’t partaken in any strategies to influence their performance weights penalties, with the C63 DTMs being the heaviest cars on the grid for most of the season.

Head of DTM at Mercedes AMG, Ulrich Fritz, said to TouringCarTimes at Zandvoort: “We have said we don’t want to influence any race results in terms of modifying the outcome because the weights. We have been pushing like hell for the last two months, since Budapest, to get rid of it, but the others couldn’t agree on it.”

“My position would be that we need to get rid of the system tomorrow, even today. We discussed it at length on Friday, but the others combined their decisions with other conditions, which I can understand from their perspective, but is what it is and we have to look for what is best for the category.”

Jens Marquardt, BMW Motorsport director, had a different perspective: “We’ve had a lot of discussions about the performance weights, some have been very constructive and good, and I think this is something where we have to continue to find a solution that is sustainable.

“We’ve designed the regulations as a table with four legs, and the performance weights were one of those legs. If we take one of those legs away, the table will fall over. Now we have to work on a table with three legs, there have been many proposals, but none so far has achieved a unanimous consensus.”