DTM America set to be announced tonight
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| Audi welcomes US DTM initiative |
03/26/13 NASCAR-owned Grand-Am Road Racing tonight will announce an agreement to bring the German touring car series DTM to the U.S. The races, which would feature Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan and Toyota and U.S. manufacturers such as Cadillac, Lincoln or Dodge SRT, would begin as early as '15 and may take place on the same weekend as the combined Grand-Am-American-Le-Mans series, United SportsCar Racing. The DTM announcement will be made at Intercontinental in N.Y.
03/17/13 [Editor's Note: This fits right in with the France Family strategy to further marginalize and eventually kill off open wheel racing in the USA. Saloon car racing is what they are all about. If they don't own open wheel racing, then it is the enemy and will work every angle to eliminate it. While other series are expending globally into the USA, IndyCar's goal (as dictated by Roger Penske and others) is to remain a small domestic series under the long shadow of NASCAR, NHRA, the new United SportsCar Racing series and now DTM.]
The long-awaited DTM America series is set to be announced at the end of the month.
US sanctioning body Grand-Am, which has been in discussions about bringing the DTM category to North America in recent years, has put out a statement saying that it will make a major announcement concerning the DTM in New York later this month.
No details have been announced apart from the date of the press conference on March 26 ahead of the city's motor show, but the respective motorsport bosses of DTM participants Audi and BMW have hinted that the press conference will confirm that the DTM will be exported to the USA within the next two years.
Audi Sport boss Wolfgang Ullrich, speaking at Sebring on the eve of the American Le Mans Series opener, said: "Our goal with the other manufacturers has always been to bring a grid together [in the USA], but you will have to wait for what is going to be announced."
BMW Motorsport's Jens Marquardt, who was also at Sebring, suggested that the time was right to export the DTM to North America.
"We believe there is room for a DTM-based series over here," he explained. "The potential for a very good racing platform is there."
The timescale for the introduction of a series in the USA running to DTM rules remains under wraps, but it appears unlikely to be until 2015. Autosport