Are cars being deliberately parked in the DTM on Saturdays? At the Nurburgring, six cars were already out of the Saturday race after eight laps - even though GT3 cars are not exactly regarded as unreliable. In total, only twelve of the 21 cars reached the finish, which is a new negative record. On Sunday, 16 cars finished.
The reason is clear: at the Nurburgring, each driver has only three sets of tyres available for both qualifying sessions and both races. So anyone who finds themselves in an unfavourable position on Saturday would rather retire before the stop - and have one more new set of tyres available on Sunday. But that is now causing major discontent.
"I really didn't like to see that many people just retired because they had no chance or because they anyway had the penalty or whatever," Manthey Porsche driver Thomas Preining makes his stance clear. "I think this is not good for the fans that pay to be here."
Preining calls for consequences: "Not in the spirit of the sport"
The Austrian is calling for consequences: "You have to have more control over what the teams do - or penalise them if someone parks the car - because it is not in the spirit of the sport." From the teams' point of view, however, it is "100 percent understandable that you do it if the regulations allow it - everyone would do that."
The "Grello" driver was overtaken on the final lap of Sunday's race in the fight for second place by Landgraf Mercedes outsider Tom Kalender, who was driving with abandon and who on Saturday had retired as early as lap seven after the collision with Nicki Thiim, giving him a clear tyre advantage.
Kalender almost overtook winner Wittmann as well. "I see it similarly to Thomas, that we have to think over the winter about how we can put a stop to this," the Schubert BMW driver also feels a line has been crossed. "Teams will always find some reasons for a DNF and can park the car, but the balance is completely wrong now. Tom had two new tyres, we had no new tyres at all."
Seven drivers stopped cars early
Not only Kalender, but also Mirko Bortolotti, Marco Mapelli, Timo Glock and the two HRT Ford drivers stopped their cars in the first eight laps on Saturday. In the cases of Arjun Maini and Finn Wiebelhaus, the strategic background was especially obvious because, after the drive-through penalty, they had no chance anyway and put everything on Sunday.
Kelvin van der Linde at least drove until the tyre change - and then reported that the rear anti-roll bar might have broken. One lap later, the Schubert BMW driver retired.
"Especially now with the new tire this season there's a huge drop-off and a huge difference between a better or a good tire and the very used tire which especially on a three tire weekend is relevant," says Preining. So according to him the situation in 2026 has also been exacerbated by the new DTM-spec tyre, which degrades a little faster.
Wittmann thinks about penalties: Can deliberate parking be proven?
But how can the problem be solved? "The only way you can prevent that is either four sets and only one pit stop on Sunday, or five sets and two pit stops like now," Preining replies. "Because otherwise you have to run some set from Saturday on Sunday as well."
Wittmann would even go a step further. "I don't think you solve that with more or fewer sets of tyres," he says. "You might even have to think about penalties if parking the car is unnecessary."
That leaves only the question: how do you want to prove that a car really was not undriveable if a driver claims it was? Apart from that, in an unfavourable starting situation a team would be able to prepare a car in such a way that it does not last the whole race.
Retirement rate on Saturday: statistics show interesting trend
But do the statistics prove that the retirement rate on Saturday really is higher than on Sunday? On average, over the six weekends in 2026, 15.5 cars reached the finish on Saturdays, while on Sundays it was 17.5. What is striking, however, is that the difference was greatest most recently at Oschersleben and at the Nurburgring.
At Oschersleben, 14 cars reached the finish on Saturday and 18 on Sunday. And at the Nurburgring, the comparison was 12:16. At both weekends, three sets of tyres were available instead of four - as is the case in Spielberg, at Zandvoort, at the Sachsenring and in Zandvoort.
And - unlike at the Lausitzring and at the Norisring - there was no rain shower in the Saturday race that also brought wet tyres into play and eased the burden on the teams. It might therefore already be possible to get the problem under control if, on the weekends with three sets in 2027, a fourth set is used.
