How relevant is the DTM to F1?

Can a touring car series, racing primarily in a single nation, be considered a pathway to Formula 1?

Generally, that's a fairly simple question to answer. If you take the UK as an example, then those who have raced in the British Formula 3 Championship over the past few years will have had their sights far more firmly set on F1 than recent British Touring Car champions Colin Turkington, Andrew Jordan and Gordon Shedden.

But when you get to Germany, the distinction between reigning DTM champion Marco Wittmann and 2014 F3 king Markus Pommer is a little less clear-cut.

Those national F3 series were in far from rude health last year, and they won't even be run in 2015. And yet, under the FIA's new superlicence qualification rules for 2016, Pommer and British F3 champion Martin Cao moved 10 points closer to F1 eligibility than Wittmann.

No tin-top classes are represented on the points system, but it's the unique nature of the DTM - with its quality-laden field and part open-wheeler/part GT/part touring car machinery - that means its absence is a point of debate.

"I feel it's a disgrace that the DTM isn't included in the superlicence qualification system," says 2005 champion and former McLaren test driver Gary Paffett.

"It's a top series, it's a series that's proved it can take drivers to Formula 1, like Paul di Resta - and he made a great job of it in F1 - and now Pascal [Wehrlein] as a reserve driver for Mercedes is looking to race in F1."

Di Resta says DTM prepared him better for Formula 1 than GP2 would have © LAT

If the superlicence scoring had been introduced at the turn of the millennium, it's unlikely that Paffett or anyone else would have felt as strongly.

When the DTM returned in 2000 in its new guise after a three-year hiatus, the top six included champion Bernd Schneider (who turned 36 during the season), Manuel Reuter (39), Klaus Ludwig (51), Joachim Winkelhock (40) and Uwe Alzen (33), all of whom had already carved out successful international careers.

The exception was the fourth-placed driver, Marcel Fassler, who at 24 was part of Mercedes' line-up, before forging a triple Le Mans-winning career with Audi.

Today, the DTM boasts a much younger field. Wittmann was 24 when he lifted the crown last September, while the runner-up, double champion Mattias Ekstrom, is an elder statesman at 36.

Wittmann is indicative of the current mix. A runner-up in the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2010 and '11 before being picked up by BMW, he's the sort of driver who wouldn't be out of place on an F1 grid. As it stands, his 2014 efforts count for nothing if he were to pursue a drive.

The DTM's three manufacturers have requested a rethink on the series' absence from the FIA's list of championships offering superlicence points, which takes us back to the original question: can a touring car series really be a Formula 1 feeder?

OK, it has served as a retirement home for veterans including Mika Hakkinen, David Coulthard, Jean Alesi and Ralf Schumacher, but recent history suggests it can produce new F1 talent. As much as any series outside of GP2, GP3, Formula Renault 3.5 and F3, anyway.

Paffett combined DTM with extensive McLaren F1 test and development role © LAT

Di Resta's three seasons with Force India are the benchmark, while Christijan Albers raced with Minardi and Spyker between 2005 and '07, new Manor recruit Roberto Merhi spent two years with Mercedes, and Paffett combined the DTM with F1 testing duties for most of his nine-year relationship with McLaren.

Of the group, di Resta's and Paffett's F1 opportunities stemmed from their involvement with Mercedes, which picked them up from single-seaters.

"[DTM] always had an appeal from when Dario [Franchitti] was racing in it back in the '90s, and when I got into F3 I was introduced to the guys and felt very comfortable. It was definitely a journey I wanted to go on," says di Resta.

"I believed they were going to give me the best opportunities to race for them, but equally let me have my options of making Formula 1, which was the ultimate dream. Once that happened, through the likes of Norbert Haug and being introduced to [then-McLaren team principal] Martin Whitmarsh, that all got me on my path."

Paffett's touring car move came after his Formula 3000 team went bust, but almost took him to the F1 grid. "I didn't really have a choice at the time," Paffett says. "I didn't really have the funding to do anything else, to be honest.

"The superlicence rules would have been a problem for me. There's no way I would have got a seat with an F1 team in a testing role if I wasn't able to get a superlicence, which I wouldn't have been able to [under the new rules]."

In the same timeframe, Allan McNish and Andre Lotterer (the latter particularly briefly) made their F1 debuts from sportscar racing. And Indycars played a role in the promotion of Williams apprentice Juan Pablo Montoya, Cristiano da Matta and Sebastien Bourdais. Both those forms of racing are included on the FIA's superlicence eligibility points system.

Unique nature of DTM cars mean they are not conventional tin-tops

Were it not for the new superlicence regulations, you'd have expected Wehrlein to add to the DTM's tally. The 20-year-old was, like many of his 2015 rivals, signed from single-seaters, and combines his Mercedes race seat with F1 reserve-driver duties. He's the public face of the debate.

Wehrlein's F3 efforts, which yielded race wins in the European championship, were good enough to grab Mercedes' attention. What he's done since in the DTM, its F1 simulator and testing has impressed the F1 world champion squad, so much so that investment was made to secure extra seat time with Force India during the first Barcelona pre-season test in February, before he was summoned back to Mercedes to replace an ill Lewis Hamilton.

For the rest of the year, a DTM seat is obviously a much more cost-effective way for Mercedes to keep its reserve driver occupied between simulator sessions than GP2. But whereas di Resta five years earlier was helped into a role with Force India to log the required superlicence mileage, Wehrlein could be all dressed up with nowhere to go.

That is, of course, purely in F1 terms. As a young driver trying to navigate a complicated and expensive ladder of junior classes, a manufacturer taking you under its wing and potentially setting you up for a career in the world's most prestigious touring car series isn't something to sneeze at.

Tom Blomqvist has just joined BMW, after splitting Esteban Ocon and Max Verstappen in European F3 last year, while fourth-placed Lucas Auer has been snapped up by Mercedes.

In fact, of the 24 drivers set to line up in 2015, 11 of them have won a race in Formula Renault 3.5, GP3 or F3 since 2010. Edoardo Mortara, Daniel Juncadella and Antonio Felix da Costa have four Macau Grand Prix victories between them.

DTM youngster Wehrlein has been racking up F1 testing mileage © XPB

Like Wehrlein and Wittmann, these are single-seater aces who would likely prove decent (or better) grand prix drivers, but that door is closing unless they trade in a paid factory drive for finding sponsorship for GP2.

There's no question about the quality within the DTM. Six former champions will be on the 2015 grid and one of them, returnee di Resta, was only 15th in '14, one spot ahead of another former grand prix driver, Timo Glock. The only driver to not score a point, Vitaly Petrov, has an F1 podium to his name.

"In my opinion, the level of competition and the level of driver in the DTM, throughout the whole field, is better than Formula 1," Paffett says.

"The guys at the top of F1 are undoubtedly the best drivers in the world, but the strength in depth across the whole field in the DTM is a lot stronger than it is in F1."

That in itself doesn't necessarily mean a DTM champion would do the same in F1. Questions linger about the politics of the series, and the make-up within and between manufacturers, as to whether the playing field is always level. Wehrlein became the DTM's youngest-ever race winner in 2014, but in a tough year for Mercedes he was only eighth in the standings.

If you're not in the right car, you won't win, so superlicence points become a moot point. And the other question is, do the cars even prepare you for F1? Barely a 'touring car' in the conventional sense, and only about 1.5 seconds slower than an F3 car on most circuits despite carrying more than twice the weight, they are streets ahead of other tin-tops in terms of aerodynamics and technology.

"The big difference is the weight of the cars: hundreds of kilos more than an F1 car, and it has less power and less downforce," says Paffett.

DTM driver quality is high - F1 podium finisher Petrov failed to score in 2014 © LAT

"But there are similarities: the DTM is still fundamentally a performance car, it's not like a modified road car. It's rear-wheel drive, it has a lot of downforce for a touring car, it has suspension set-ups similar to F1. So they're not completely different, but there are significant differences in the weight-to-power ratio and grip that make it a different car to drive."

Looking back, di Resta says he found the jump from single-seaters easy, and that alternating between DTM races and Force India free-practice sessions required little thought by midway through the 2010 season.

The only thing that you really have to get your head around [from F3] is your position in a DTM car, and how much visibility you lose," he says.

"You're also sitting slightly more rearward than you would in a single-seater. Obviously that changes your feeling of the car, and when you're using the sidewalls of the tyres and feeling understeer and oversteer in a different way.

"At the end of the day it's a much bigger car than a single-seater, but what you can relate to F1 is that it's very much dependent on aerodynamics. The more the regulations tighten up, the more dependent you've seen the car become on aero. The rate of development is very similar to F1 and even the introduction of things like DRS can be beneficial for anyone who feels that's a road to F1."

Outside driver development, both Paffett and di Resta say they found unique advantages to entering the F1 paddock via the DTM, including working with engineers to develop a car as opposed to jumping into a spec Dallara single-seater.

"I think DTM prepared me much better than GP2 would ever have done," di Resta says. "I definitely think that DTM was a far better way for me to get into F1, and obviously it was the only way I could do it at that point.

IndyCar is on the list of superlicence categories, and so is the WEC © LAT

"Representing a manufacturer like Mercedes-Benz, whether it's press management, developing a car with a team like you do in F1, and doing everything that is required as a driver, it's definitely something I look back on and think was very positive.

"It kept me racing at the front and I believe people can make the jump, should they want it enough and have it come up at the right time."

The three DTM manufacturers have different motorsport programmes. For Audi, LMP1 headlines its activities, and the DTM has also played a role in developing endurance drivers. From its 2015 line-up, Fassler, Oliver Jarvis and Filipe Albuquerque all raced in the DTM before sportscars, while 2011 champion Mike Rockenfeller is Audi's WEC reserve.

For BMW, the DTM currently sits at the top of the tree, but it has ventured into both F1 and sportscar racing in the past 20 years. And Mercedes currently rules the roost at the pinnacle of the sport.

Despite differing priorities, the trio is united in believing the tin-top series should be recognised by F1 for the role it plays in developing drivers.

Whatever manufacturers are involved in, single-seater racing is the ultimate playground from which to select their star drivers. But racing in a super-competitive 'touring car' series doesn't mean they'll forget how to drive single-seaters.

A quarter of a century ago, Mercedes assembled a crack squad of juniors for the World Sportscar Championship. While most of his contemporaries were in F3000, a certain Michael Schumacher was racing with a roof over his head. A different background didn't seem to hurt him.