F?ssler and Alesi team up

In a swap around from 2002, Mercedes drivers Marcel F?ssler and Jean Alesi will be team-mates in the DTM this year. Last season Alesi partnered Bernd Schneider and F?ssler drove with Uwe Alzen but for 2003 Alzen and Schneider will drive the silver Mercedes and Alesi and F?ssler the black cars.

"I'm happy because it's good publicity to be in a team with Jean!" F?ssler laughingly told Motorsport.com. "But really, it's no difference, I still have to beat everyone, including my team mate. On the weekends you work on your own; you share information that's important to the team but you do your own thing."

The team was previously Warsteiner but although F?ssler and Alesi's cars will be black, as Warsteiner's cars were last year, the team name will be different. Warsteiner has dropped many of its motor racing interests, including the DTM, but a new sponsor has yet to be revealed.

Alesi will be giving his opinions on this weekend's F1 San Marino Grand Prix for Italian television: "For half an hour before and after qualifying, and then an hour before and after the race, I shall be giving my opinions and helping the viewers to understand it all better," explained the former F1 star.

F?ssler, meanwhile, is impatient to get going in this year's DTM: "I'm really looking forward to next weekend," he said of the season opener at Hockenheim on April 27th. "I'm feeling really motivated and can't wait to get started."

The Mercedes squad of nine drivers this year is: Bernd Schneider, Uwe Alzen, Marcel F?ssler, Jean Alesi, Thomas J?ger, Bernd Mayl?nder, Christijan Albers, Stefan M?cke and Katsutomo Kaneishi.

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