Stretched Audi gives Abt team new hope

Last year's tail-enders, the Abt team has been given a rule break over the winter to allow its machines to have virtually the same wheelbase and equal overhangs to its Mercedes and Opel rivals. Its solution to the changes means that the car's rear end is markedly different and should give the downforce that the team lacked in spades last season.

The DTM press pack was forced to wait at the launch yesterday (Thursday) at Hockenheim as the car arrived late from its Kempten base after a brief shakedown run in a car park. The new machine then turned a wheel in anger for the first time in the afternoon and will have its first proper run at the Hungaroring next week.

"The guys have been working so hard to get the cars ready, maybe too hard," said team boss Hans-Jurgen Abt. "We will soon have two new cars to test and we still plan to have four ready for the opening round [on April 22]."

Its driving line up retains BTCC champion Laurent Aiello and Christian Abt, while Sweden's Mattias Ekstrom and German Martin Tomczyk replace Kris Nissen and James Thompson.

"On paper, with the changes we've made, there's definitely the possibility to get on the podium and even win races this year - that's the target," said Aiello. "All the dimensions of the cars are almost the same, but not quite. They [Merc and Opel] are still longer than us, but we've done everything we could possibly do with what they've given us. But even if aerodynamically we still lose out a little bit, I hope we've made up for it mechanically.

"Last year, even though we had so much less downforce than the rest, we were able to progress mechanically to a point where we were sometimes within half a second of the rest, so let's hope we've kept that progress up," added the Frenchman.