BMW and Mercedes back cancellation of DTM Lausitzring test

All three of the series' marques were scheduled to return to the circuit on Tuesday and Wednesday, however BMW and Mercedes-Benz expressed doubts about the value of their participation after Sunday's race, following a weekend that was dominated by Audi.

In announcing the move, a statement from the DTM said "the reason is that the tyre currently being used is deviating in its handling characteristics from empirical values for a number of teams", and that it has requested "detailed analysis and a prompt clarification" from Hankook.

Having endured a tough weekend - plagued by severe degradation across its line-up - BMW felt the test would be more beneficial after time to analyse the event's data.

"Somehow there is a disconnect and that's what we need to work on and that's what we need to figure out," BMW motorsport chief Jens Marquardt told AUTOSPORT.

"The only way to do this is a deep analysis and really dig into our data, everything that we did over winter, everything that we did for the last two [race] weekends.

"Then we need to sit with Hankook together and work really intensively, because somehow there is a disconnect and we need to figure out where.

"It would not make a lot of sense to start testing here from Tuesday for two days; without this analysis there is no point because it would be just running around again and trying things in a more or less diffused way."

A lack of fresh tyre gain had been the BMW drivers' biggest problem during Hockenheim's season-opener.

"It's really disappointing, the gap was bigger than we felt it was in Hockenheim and what's really puzzling is that it doesn't really comply with all of the hard work we've done over the winter, all of the development we have put into our programme," Marquardt said.

"Clearly we can't get the tyres to work in the time that we needed, seen in qualifying and [Sunday's] restart, but also definitely more of an instability and variation than expected, and that's what we need to look into."

Mercedes was Audi's closest challenger last weekend, albeit with best results of fifth and sixth in Saturday's race, having claimed podiums at Hockenheim.

"After quite a successful weekend at Hockenheim, we came here with other expectations than to finish fifth and sixth," Mercedes' DTM boss Ulrich Fritz said.

"We have to carefully analyse the situation because for us there are a few parameters in our car we do not understand currently.

"Especially the tyre performance and the relation between car and driver and tyres, is not what we expected, we need to carefully analyse that together with our partner Hankook."