F1 Fanatic

German DTM and Japanese Super GT cars will be able to race in both series from 2014 as part of a co-operation deal signed by the two championships.

The harmonisation of technical rules between the two series could see Mercedes, Toyota, Audi, Nissan, BMW and Honda competing in the same races.

Super GT will adopt ‘New DTM’ rules from 2014. A performance balancing system will be used to integrate cars with “differing engine concepts”.

More details here:

http://www.dtm.com/en/News/Joint-future-for-DTM-and-Japanese-Super-GT-from-2014.html

Ahh brilliant news. I remember reading about this idea a year or so ago. I’m glad it’s become concrete. Super GT has some of the best racing I’ve seen… although the same can’t be said for DTM, so I hope the rules don’t end up making Super GT as drab as some DTM races can be.

Whatever happened to the talk of that American DTM series using these rules? Does anyone know of anything coming of that?

Oooooooh! I like the sound of this.

Loves me some SuperGT, I does.

I guess I’m probably in a tiny minority here, but I can’t say that I’m very enthusiastic about this idea. To me it seems like a step towards increasing homogenisation in motorsports. I love that there are hundreds of different racing categories around the world, each producing these incredible, unique racing machines. Merging categories means less diversity, and less room for creativity.

I appreciate that the big driver behind a lot of the changes recently is one of cost, but I still feel desperately sad at the merging and exclusion of various GT classes over the past few years which lead to the demise of the mighty Corvette C6.R GT1. While I do see the appeal of seeing the likes of Mercedes go up against Nissan and vice versa, I do worry that it removes something from their respective formulae which made them unique.