On Sunday, the ADAC-organized DTM test will take place at the Sachsenring: Who will be driving and why the test is so important for Schubert and Dörr
In one week, the DTM will enter the third-to-last weekend of the season at the Sachsenring—and the decisive phase in the battle for the championship title. This makes today’s test at the rollercoaster track in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, organized by the ADAC and attended by all drivers and teams, all the more important.
This is also due to the fact that, in view of the quota of five DTM test days per car in the 2025 season, the test will be forfeited if a driver does not take part. The BMW camp in particular is well aware of the significance of this. “This will be very important for us because we need to find performance there,”
“And you can’t get that in the two sessions on Friday afternoon, where you’re also limited in terms of tires. So we’ll be testing a few things on Sunday,” announced the team boss.
More options thanks to additional tire sets
Schubert, whose drivers Rene Rast (+20 points) and Marco Wittmann (+36) have fought their way up to fourth and seventh place in the championship with their double victory at the Nürburgring, alludes to the fact that the BMW M4 GT3 has had problems at the Sachsenring in recent years, especially in the twisty first sector.
It will therefore be important for the BMW team to use the seven hours of track time to make progress, as each driver is allowed a maximum of four new sets of tires per day, which will be monitored by the ADAC. On a practice Friday, however, each driver will only receive one new set of tires – and can use an unused set from one of the previous weekends if necessary.
An additional advantage: the Balance of Performance (BoP) for the Sachsenring weekend was already sent to the teams on Friday and will also be prescribed by the ADAC during the test, which means that the teams will be testing under real competitive conditions.
Dörr team wants to make progress in race performance
But it’s not just the BMW Team Schubert that has big plans for the test, which is not open to spectators, but also the McLaren team Dörr. “We did a lot during the summer break, which we will unpack and test at the Sachsenring test,”
According to Dörr, these are adjustments to the axle geometry within the homologation, which the team hopes will bring progress. “If it really works as we imagine, we will take another step forward, at least with cold tires,” Robin Dörr announced.
“We can do it on one lap,” he says, referring to Ben Dörr’s sensational pole position at the Nürburgring. “We’ve been proving since Oschersleben that we did our homework over the winter. Now we need to make progress in the race with cold tires.”
“Would also help Timo Glock a lot”
Dörr is convinced: “That would also help Timo a lot. The McLaren is certainly not easy to drive and very special. We have a lot of kinematic problems to contend with.”
So it will be interesting to see who is best prepared for the Sachsenring weekend. One thing is already clear: even if the McLaren team is working on Dörr’s tire warm-up in the race, most teams will focus on qualifying performance. This is because overtaking is particularly difficult on the fast track, which has a long motorcycle racing tradition.