San Marino GP: Michelin preview

DTM: Spectacular start into the new season

Spectacular driving actions, thousands of spectators and the unique backdrop of the Europa-Park Rust – two weeks before its opening round of 2002, the DTM had a great start into the new season. In Germany’s largest leisure park near Freiburg, the 21 drivers of Abt-Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Opel presented themselves to the 300 media representatives and some20,000 park visitors, who also could see and hear the race cars of 2002, the Abt-Audi TT-R, Mercedes-Benz CLK-DTM and Opel Astra V8 Coupé.

The drivers, including the new arrivals from Formula 1, Jean Alesi (F) and Karl Wendlinger (A), demonstrated for the first time the standing start like in Grand Prix racing, one of the DTM’s new features for 2002. Christian Abt (Abt-Audi), Uwe Alzen (Mercedes-Benz) and Timo Scheider (Opel) raced against each other. With the Opel Astra V8 Coupé, Scheider decided the first competition of the news season in his favour. Autograph sessions, public interviews, a pit stop competition (winner: Abt Sportsline) and a doughnut contest were also part of the attractive entertainment programme for the visitors of the Europa-Park, who were able to find out, how close to the spectators and family-friendly the DTM is once again in its third year. Many fans drove to Rust just for the presentation at the Europa-Park and got the most out of it. Several car clubs and fan clubs of the DTM came to Rust together.

New: ADAC partner of the DTM, Blaupunkt joins the ranks of series’ sponsors

The ADAC is new partner of the DTM. Europe’s largest automobile club with 14.5 million of members signed an according contract with the DTM head organisation ITR e.V. ADAC sports president Hermann Tomczyk: "German motorsport and the ADAC have traditionally been closely linked. After our junior series Formula BMW ADAC Championship and ADAC VW Lupo Cup have already been part of the DTM support package for many years, we are now extending our partnership in a sensible way." ITR-chairman Hans Werner Aufrecht is enthusiastic about the co-operation: "It is a partnership for the benefit of German motor sport." With Blaupunkt, another renowned company has become involved as a series’ sponsor of the DTM. Blaupunkt joins the ranks of the current partners Bosch, Dunlop, Hasseröder and Vodafone.

This year, the DTM includes ten rounds, six of them in Germany and four in neighbouring countries. The season opener takes place at the short circuit of the Hockenheimring, April 21.

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