DTM 2019 needs its own 'push him out'

Audi heads to the Lausitzring this weekend knowing that if it outscores BMW by 20 points over the course of the event, it will win the 2019 DTM manufacturers' crown with two rounds still to go.

While a just reward for adapting to the Class One regulations better than its rivals, success has proved to be something of a double-edged sword for Audi - but the intra-team friction it now faces as a result is exactly what the DTM needs.

No doubt Audi saw it as a stab in the back when its former driver Timo Scheider - now a pundit for DTM broadcaster Sat.1 - wrote a blog to 'expose' the ongoing tension between title favourite Rene Rast and fellow Audi man Nico Muller.

This was coming from a man who was front and centre in the DTM's last high-profile spat: back in 2015 he earned a one-race ban for obeying an instruction to "push him out", and deliberately colliding with Mercedes' Pascal Wehrlein and Robert Wickens. That prompted Wehrlein to claim Audi had declared "war" and, right or wrong, the DTM maximised the media attention from the controversy while Audi had to play the public apology game - with even saying sorry becoming a saga.

Inside the DTM's last team order controversy

Mitchell Adam, DTM Correspondent in 2015

Four summers ago, three little words caused a brand-bruising DTM saga for Audi.

On the last lap at the Red Bull Ring, contact from Audi's Timo Scheider fired Robert Wickens into stablemate Pascal Wehrlein, and the Mercedes pair into the Turn 3 gravel.

That Wehrlein was fighting three Audi drivers for the 2015 title would have caused enough angst. However, the radio message 'schieb ihn raus' - 'push him out' in English - was delivered to Scheider and broadcast on TV.

Mercedes was incensed, and the usually reserved Wehrlein declared "if Audi has to win a championship like this, I would say they've started a big war today".

Audi went into damage control, albeit with an element of 'they started it', believing Wickens delayed Scheider so Wehrlein could pass them both.

Its standing was complicated by the fact motorsport boss Wolfgang Ullrich (now retired) uttered the phrase, and went from admitting it on German TV to denying it in a press conference to ultimately owning it in a statement.

The brand had to take its medicine. It was found guilty of 'unsportsmanlike conduct', fined €200,000, Ullrich was barred from DTM pitlane and team radio for the rest of 2015, and Scheider banned for one round. Audi was also docked 62 manufacturers' points from that race, and ultimately lost the coveted crown to BMW by seven.

The incident was gold for the DTM, but any chance of building on it was stymied by the fact the next race was four weeks later, and at a barely attended Moscow Raceway rather than in Germany.

By then, the protagonists were all keen to move on and Wehrlein eventually won the title.

In short, Audi has history, even if its leadership make-up is now different after Ullrich's retirement.

No doubt with his experience of underhand DTM tactics in mind, Scheider wrote in his pre-Brands Hatch blog that there are "very, very high tensions among the drivers" at Audi. Expanding on Muller and Rast, Scheider said "the truth was not told" by either driver when they talked up the positivity of their relationship. Instead, Scheider believed their collision at the Norisring was a culmination of building disgruntlement behind the scenes.

At the Norisring, another poor start from Rast - his one true weakness in 2019 - meant Muller had jumped into the lead, before his stablemate retaliated at the chicane to move back ahead, only to be left facing the wrong direction when the two RS5 DTMs made contact.

In Scheider's mind, Muller and Rast sounding positive towards each other was another demonstration of the "political correctness" ingrained in the drivers by the manufacturers; the incident failed to spark a war of words in a season that's provided great racing but little in the way of a lasting narrative.

Scheider's column was an attempt at drawing attention to simmering tensions at Audi and, to some degree, it worked. While Audi motorsport boss Dieter Gass told Autosport the accusations "made him smile", both Muller and Rast admitted to a degree of tension - though they both added heavy caveats.

Rast told Autosport his relationship with Muller was amicable, adding: "There's always tension, we just don't play kindergarten games. We are professionals, we have dinner together and WhatsApp each other, it doesn't affect [us] professionally."

Muller's take was similar: "On track, we all want to win and beat the other guys out there, and Rene is the one to beat at the moment. I end up driving at the same brand, having the same tools and driving the same car. We spend time together obviously, we don't only share DTM duties, we've shared cars in endurance racing and we get on well as colleagues off the track.

"We won't all agree on everything, which is the most normal thing on the planet because we are sportsmen and we want to put ourselves in the best position. We will always have these little things."

The rule of not taking risks has become ingrained in Muller's mind, something that will now need to change if he is to win the 2019 title

It was certainly more tactful than one source at Audi who, when questioned about the Scheider blog, took issue with the double champion's claim that Audi "kicked me [out] without warning" at the end of 2016. The response from our source? "You need to perform to stay..."

After Muller and Rast confirmed the underlying tensions, Gass's response tellingly changed: "If it affects the team dynamics, it's only in a positive way. We have two contenders up there who are having a very strong season.

"Nico is extremely consistent. We are racing and I am happy for them to be racing, but we need to be racing with our brains switched on, which means basically playing different strategies - one against another - and if you recognise one is quicker, let him go without fighting."

While Rast and Muller both followed the outlined agreement Gass mentioned at Brands, there were a few curiosities at that event that raised questions, and it demonstrated why the Rast/Muller dynamic must change if the latter is to take a first DTM title.

In the second race, Audi's Loic Duval had made a strong getaway to lead from Rast, with Muller third once he had worked his way up from eighth on the grid. But at the end of the first lap, Rast breezed past Duval without obstruction, and Muller repeated the move not long after. Gass's willingness to praise Duval's conduct seemed to suggest there had been a pre-race instruction not to obstruct the championship contenders. Their main BMW rival Marco Wittmann certainly interpreted it that way.

The other curiosity came in the way Muller and Rast approached both of their two races. On Saturday, Rast claimed to have not realised he still had push-to-pass left late in the race - despite closing on eventual winner Wittmann and pulling away from Muller in third.

On Sunday, Muller admitted he raced Rast differently when he closed on the race leader, eventually finishing second and claiming he did not want to risk everything by attacking for the lead late-on, having already being forced to recover from a botched pitstop.

While that will have been music to Gass's ears, it paints a murky picture to onlookers. Autosport understands that Audi enforces a rule that push-to-pass is not to be used by one of its drivers against a team-mate, ostensibly on reliability grounds after BMW and the R-Motorsport Aston Martin squad both struggled with engine-related problems in 2019.

Rast says "we can fight each other as long as it happens without risk", using the example of Hockenheim since it has "a pretty long straight with the Parabolica, so if you have a 15km/h [9mph] excess with DRS, you're driving past the car in front", meaning it cannot be deemed a "risky" move.

To some degree that explains why Muller did not close on Rast significantly during the Brands opener - if the championship leader had indeed forgotten he had push-to-pass available, since Brands is considered to be the worst track on the DTM calendar for overtaking. But Rast explains "there was no announcement [from Audi] that we should not overtake each other".

Clearly, the rule of not taking risks has become ingrained in Muller's mind, something that will now need to change if he is to win the 2019 title.

"I'd shot my powder and running behind him I was scared to lose my tyres," says Muller. "When you run in dirty air and on a fast and flowing circuit, it can happen. The tyres go off from one lap to the next as Rene described. I was trying to be sensible and not overdoing it, waiting for him to kill his tyres and attack at the end. But he managed well and made no mistakes."

That caution now needs to be thrown to the wind to keep the life in the DTM season. Muller has been the most consistent driver in the series this year and has adapted to the change to the starting procedure better than most. But question marks linger over his wheel-to-wheel battling.

They don't need to be declaring 'war' on each other or to do any 'pushing' but fireworks of that magnitude would be excellent news for the DTM

"I can understand Muller when he says that he had to take a big risk to seriously attack Rast," says DTM boss Gerhard Berger. "A driver has to weigh that up. Muller is now the focus of attention, he's racing for the title.

"But if he always reluctantly gives in as a title contender and is satisfied with second place, then his reputation as a racer will be damaged.

"The killer instinct that flashed up at his last races showed me that he actually has that instinct. I can follow his argument regarding his restraint at Brands Hatch, but Muller has to show his teeth again in the next races. He can't leave any points behind."

Muller has regularly talked about his qualifying deficit and his Abt Audi squad's struggles to find the balance between qualifying and race trim across a weekend, although he believes he made a step at Brands that was disguised by the unique challenge of the condensed format at that event.

Rast remains the qualifying master, and his 24-point haul from regularly securing a place in the top three - five of them from poles - has played a key part in his 37-point buffer over Muller in the title race.

That suggests that for Muller to take the title, he must overcome Rast in race conditions.

"If we want to challenge him for that title, we need to start winning and finishing ahead of him," Muller says. "I think we have the car to do it. If you want to beat someone like Rene, you need to have everything to come together. From Lausitzring, the focus is on winning and we have to focus on qualifying better.

"You always race a team-mate a bit differently than a BMW or Aston Martin. At the coming tracks, it will be easier to overtake. Brands is a bad example, there it would've been a lot of a risk and we needed a bigger pace delta."

The Assen event last month suggested there could be a four-way fight for the 2019 title, but Philipp Eng's struggles at the last two rounds mean BMW's only contender is Wittmann, who now needs to banish his up-and-down weekend form - often a result of reliability gremlins - and hope he can pressure the leading Audi duo into errors, since he trails Rast and Muller by 59 and 22 points respectively.

BMW began sniping in Audi's direction at Brands, which is no surprise considering the M4 DTM appears to be the second-best car, but Audi's domination of that weekend now puts the Four Rings ever more in the spotlight.

Last year it ran under the radar and could easily justify team-order moves such as Muller moving out of Rast's way in Austria when Rast was defending his title against Mercedes and Gary Paffett.

This weekend at the Lausitzring, Muller's attitude must be in total contrast to last year's title run-in. For the first time he must face up against the DTM's leading light and prove to Audi that the title fight has to remain open between the two of them.

They don't need to be declaring 'war' on each other or to do any 'pushing' - though, being frank, controversial fireworks of that magnitude would be excellent news for the DTM's profile. But those "high tensions" Scheider wrote of actually manifesting themselves on the track would be exactly the story the DTM needs to avoid a muted end of its season.