According to Autosport’s sister title Motorsport-Total.com, the curbs on the amount of private testing came into force on 1 March and will apply until the season finale at Hockenheim in October.
Teams will be allowed to carry out five days of testing for each driver either together or separately under new regulations approved by the German motorsport federation DMSB at the end of February.
This means teams will have the option of running both drivers together for five days or splitting the running across 10 days with one driver on each day.
BMW squad Schubert Motorsport, which will expand to three cars this year after signing Marco Wittmann to partner incumbents Rene Rast and Sheldon van der Linde, will theoretically be able to test the M4 GT3 for a maximum of 15 days but only with one driver at a time.
As per regulations: "A DTM driver may take part in a maximum of five limited DTM test days."
The ADAC has defined a ‘limited DTM test day’ as a driving activity by a DTM driver in a GT3 car carried out by a DTM team on the Pirelli tyres used in the championship.
Interestingly, there is no restriction on the number of tyres that teams will be allowed to burn through during a test day. Only a hard limit on the number of fresh sets of tyres has been stated in the regulations.
“DTM teams and DTM drivers should not use more than three new sets of tyres during a limited DTM test,” it reads.
It is understood that the ADAC doesn’t have the financial means to monitor complete tyre usage during private DTM tests.
However, the aim is to gauge how much rubber teams use through using random samples during testing, so that it can intervene in the future if necessary.
The ADAC has tried to cover possible grey areas with numerous clauses, as it is not that easy to ban tests with GT3 cars that are used worldwide across a number of championships.
For instance, teams must register any driving activities - including in other series - in a new online system at least 20 working days in advance and wait for approval. This also applies to the DTM drivers, but only for the circuits that are part of the DTM calendar.
Restrictions also apply if a DTM team wants to test with a driver who is not active in the series but has a platinum status under the FIA’s driver rating system.
Excluded from test restrictions are events and official test days in other series, as well as tests in which Pirelli DTM tyres are not used.
ADAC teams with an advantage?
The DTM teams that also compete in the ADAC GT Masters could have a possible advantage, as drivers with gold, silver and bronze statuses are allowed to compete in the ADAC's second-tier GT3 series, where no testing restrictions apply.
That is a situation that could be exploited, as a young talent with gold or silver status could easily provide useful feedback about the car's handling, especially since the ADAC races take place on the same weekends as the DTM ones.
For this reason the ADAC has created the DTM Sporting Board, which consists of DTM series manager Michael Rebhan, technical coordinator Robert Maas and Michael Kramp from the DMSB. The task of the committee is to check the behaviour of the teams using the data collected, to identify trends and tighten the regulations if necessary.
As things stand, the regulations do not state any sanctions in case a team is found to have breached testing limits. This has to do with the fact that a list of penalties is still being worked out by the ADAC.
There have been talks about a wide range of punishments, ranging from fines to harsh sporting penalties for not registering a test or carrying out a test without authorisation.
