Quote:
Originally Posted by DS"
I have the feeling that you misunderstood my point. I talk about a drivers appeal in Germany. After all, the core of DTM IS Germany. It has most fans in Germany, it has the biggest TV ratings in Germany and probably the most media attention in Germany. Yet, Bruno Spengler or even Mike Rockenfeller are hardly known in Germany. Case in point: Sandro Cortese's victory of the Moto3 championship received far more attention in BILD (Germany's most-selling newspaper) than Spengler's DTM victory in 2012. Whereas Cortese got half a page, Spengler just got a short report on the right edge of the page.
I also doubt that the manufacturers do marketing campaigns with their non-German DTM drivers. Or does Mercedes commercials with Gary Paffett for British TV? Where were the BMW ad with Spengler for French/Canadian TV? And surely there have been some ads on Spanish TV with the Spanish DTM drivers, right?
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nah, i was actually just trying to offer the counter positive points. mind you, if you look at the btcc nobody thought any less of giovanardi (sp, it's been a while) or yvan muller or alain menu because they weren't british.
i think the example you give of the bild coverage is more a fault of the newspaper and the organisers marketing. i don't know what the answer is, but it's not going to be fixed by turning the dtm back into an exclusive german thing.
at the moment the dtm has precious few drivers paying for drives, which is generally regarded as a highly desirable way of running a series. the btcc isn't like that at all. in fact it's the other way around. it's like that because no manufacturers want to be involved to the extent that mercedes, audi and bmw are in germany.
the tv advertising example is a red herring, because it's not about selling cars to people really any more. i believe every time bmw survey existing owners motorsport comes out surprisingly low on the list. it's marketing the product (and to be fair, the country) business to business and that sort of thing that matters, if they're still seeing value from that side of the programme then they'll stick with it.
the fans are, as always in the really big manufacturers world, a minor consideration. sad, but true.
bert - fair point about the legacy drivers. though maybe you could argue that if they've not (been allowed to?) saved the world and won the title by now then perhaps they'd be better off farmed out to some of the sportscar projects as a change of scenery. a couple of them really make you think "yes, but why?".