Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt K
Agree with a lot of what you say here, however, your division of GT3 series into tiers is not really on for me. British GT being mostly a ProAm series can't be a top tier whereas DTM is a low tier. I'd definitely put DTM into your top tier while British GT into the low tier.
GTWC would definitely stay in the top one as this is 'World' championship although it's a typical endurance format (alongside sprint) which is not much of an interest for me - more of a teams competition than drivers and lots of names so that it's quite tough to follow it as one championship.
As for ADAC GT for now it's impossible to pick a winner in a ADAC vs DTM fight. This'll be felt in a few years' time maybe, next year the earliest I suppose.
DTM has a good grid and I'm definitely choosing this over ADAC GT but have to say the latter's grid is also strong (although with a bigger portion of amateurish/not really recognisable drivers), the whole package is good, we can see some efforts to widen its appeal like a new TV deal, these 'talk shows' on YouTube and so on and so forth.
DTM did well to preserve the championship but time will tell what it'll do to its identity and profile. I can't help but think that maybe the decision to switch to GT3 cars was a bit too quick but on the other hand the other option was to cancel the series. There are some ideas that look good on paper like going down the Supercars route or moving to GTE rules and I'd say both would be definitely better for DTM. But money is always a burden and few teams would be able to participate in GTE DTM (not many cars available as well) whereas adopting Supercars ruleset (or creating its own but somewhat similar) would take longer and who knows if anyone would be interested in that.
Berger capitalised on the fact that there are many teams already owning GT3 cars, many teams specialising in this type of racing and DTM is an alternative for some teams - possibly bigger marketability, still DTM's probably the most popular series in Germany (apart from F1) and has quite a following in Europe. So for some this was an opportunity to do something a bit different, sort of 'step up' maybe. But what makes me think is if there was a completely different ruleset for DTM - would there be a place for this championship? We live in a fast-changing world and motorsport's received a heavy blow in recent years and the scene is shrinking - no surprise there'll be championships disappearing in the years to come.
Last thought for now is that it's a huge shame there's a big rift between DTM and ADAC GT. They could join forces and create a quite a unique championship based on GT3 rules taking some things from one championship and others from the other. But this won't happen and there are a lot of obstacles that make it impossible.
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Sorry, I was ranking more in terms of enjoyment value.
I agree though there is a lot of potential for DTM, but it does require some improvement.
Id like to hypothesis what a ADAC GT and DTM merger would look like. Maybe its not about merging grids, maybe theres 60 min Pro Am 2 driver races, and 50 min all pro single driver races, then you merge the two GT4 series fully. I'd like to see that as a weekend package.
GT3 Pro races 2x 0h50 - single driver pro only
GT3 Pam races 2x 1h - 2 driver pro am format
GT4 Germany 2x 1h - 2 driver pro am format
TCR Germany 2x 1h
Plus the formula series ADAC currently has