Bad mood at Haupt Racing Team over harsh punishment

Ahead of the DTM round at the Nürburgring, the Haupt Racing Team was handed a heavy penalty. Both Ford Mustang GT3s must serve a drive-through penalty in Saturday’s race – the harshest penalty since the introduction of the testing ban in the 2024 DTM. Read more about the penalty here.

“We demonstrably gained no advantage from the test, which was solely intended to get the ABS problems under control,” team boss Ulrich Fritz explained to Motorsport-Magazin at the Nürburgring. “The test had absolutely no sporting relevance, particularly as we didn’t run on a new set of tyres (100 km mileage) but instead used last year’s Pirelli specification. We also drove on a different circuit layout featuring the Goodyear hairpin, the faster Veedol chicane, and not on the current DTM variant with the short connection to the GP circuit. We only completed 14 push laps. “Compared to last year, these were actually two to three seconds slower per lap.”

“There was no performance advantage, which is why the penalty now affecting both our drivers is incomprehensible to us,” grumbles the team principal of the Ford racing team. In his opinion, even a sporting penalty need not have been so drastic: “Given the facts of the case, I believe – as has been the practice in the past for similar offences – that a fine would have been sufficient. Even cancelling one of the DTM’s free practice sessions on Friday would, in our view, still have been justifiable.”