In 2003, qualifying at the Nürburgring was held after nightfall, and a 25-year-old youngster by the name of Mattias Ekström at the wheel of an Abt Audi TT-R was the front runner back then. However, an official DTM race has never been held at night before – until now. On the DTM’s return to Italy, both races will take place after sunset for the first time.
Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli near Rimini is hosting the premiere. The venue of the MotoGP Grand Prix of San Marino has floodlights, which makes it perfectly suited for night races. Unforgotten has been the memorable race of the 1999 German Super Touring Car Championship there that Christian Abt won in an Audi A4 quattro. In sweltering heat, he managed to overtake Uwe Alzen’s Opel shortly before the finish.
At that time, the races at Misano were still run counter-clockwise. Today, the teams drive clockwise on the 4.226-kilometer track. According to simulation, the Audi RS 5 DTM achieves a top speed of about 250 km/h there. Most of the turns are semi-fast ones. “The exception is a mega fast corner toward the end of the lap,” says René Rast.
The Audi driver also knows Misano from events in the Audi R8 LMS GT3 race car, as do his fellow Audi drivers Robin Frijns and Jamie Green. The Briton Green just recently, in June of this year, won a round of the Italian GT Championship and did a vision test there at night as well. “In some of the sections, it was pretty dark in spite of the the floodlights,” says the Audi driver who at Mugello in 2008 was the winner of the most recent DTM race held in Italy to date. “Unlike a GT3 car, our DTM cars only have daytime running lights, but are much faster. That’s why additional lighting is still needed, or else things might get tricky.”