There is a hard cap on the amount of private testing allowed in the DTM this year, with teams not permitted to freely run their GT3 cars outside of race weekends from the beginning of this month.
Although the exact details about the restrictions imposed by the ADAC have not been made public, Autosport understands that each team will be allowed five days of testing per driver. Sanctions for any violations are yet to be determined.
Until last year, the DTM’s top outfits were spending as much as a third of their budget on private testing, with some of them running their car on every track on the calendar except the Norisring street circuit.
Double champion Wittmann, whose previous teams Project 1 and Walkenhorst could only complete a limited number of test days due to budget constraints, feels it was important for the ADAC to keep the cost of running a DTM programme in check as the series enters its fourth season of GT3 regulations.
"I think it's a good plan," the German told Autosport. "I don't know the full outcome yet and what's behind it, but in general it's a good topic because we still have customer racing, it's not driven by the factory teams or by the manufacturers.
"You need to reduce the testing because at one stage we will face the problem that all the teams will step out of the DTM because the costs will explode to the moon.
"It's a good topic to address, and if we can find a way to have a decent window with some test days but restricted to the amount of tests they run, it would help a lot.
"It would help the championship, it would help the teams and it will reduce the costs."
Wittmann will move across from the now-defunct Project 1 team to Schubert Motorsport in 2024, forming an all-star line-up alongside fellow champions Rene Rast and Sheldon van der Linde.
It follows calls from Wittmann to be given the same tools as other factory drivers Rast and van der Linde, having felt he couldn’t compete at the front with the underfunded Project 1 outfit last year.
The 34-year-old feels having three top-line drivers in a single factory-supported team will push BMW forward this year as it aims to wrestle back the crown in 2024.
Source: Autosport