The "remarkable" debut that proves Aston's DTM intent

"To score points in our maiden race, if I may use the vernacular, is bloody remarkable."

The words are those of Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer, in the Hockenheim paddock on the Saturday evening of the first round of the 2019 DTM season. And what's eye-opening is not his justified enthusiasm in the wake of the debut for the finished-just-in-time Vantage DTM racers, but the fact that he is in Baden-Wurttemberg anyway, referring to the project gushingly and frequently using the words 'we', 'us' and 'our'.

This is, after all, the same Aston Martin that appeared to be keeping R-Motorsport's DTM programme at massively extended arm's length when it was announced last October, back at the same venue during the 2018 season finale.

Seven months later, drivers Paul di Resta, Daniel Juncadella, Jake Dennis and Ferdinand Habsburg were sporting Aston Martin jackets zipped up against the cold. Palmer was there. So this a pukka Aston Martin project, after all.

"Sometimes you have to spend a little time winning the hearts and minds of people," explains Palmer, who, before he joined Aston in 2014, was nicely exposed to Japan's similar-concept Super GT series as head of sales and marketing at Nissan.

"This is a new venture. Moving into the DTM has some risks for us. You're not running a V6, a V8 or a V12 engine [instead it's the new-for-2019 four-cylinder, two-litre turbocharged powerplants], so there's already some disconnect with the core of our brand, so it takes time for people to absorb and commit to supporting it.

"But it doesn't change the fact that these guys managed to get four cars here in record time, they managed to put Paul third on the grid, and they managed to score points in their maiden race. That's pretty fucking good, and it's those kinds of achievements that help people commit and say, 'this is really good'.

"Ultimately this will help us sell cars in Germany against German manufacturers, and help the brand feel part of the German industry. After all, there's a German gearbox and a German engine in many of our cars [Aston is part-owned by Daimler], so I wouldn't mind if the Germans adopted us a little bit!"

So the inference is that, to Palmer, DTM is just as much an official Aston Martin programme as its Prodrive-run Aston Martin Racing World Endurance Championship team and its tie-up in Formula 1 with Red Bull that has also produced the Valkyrie hypercar.

And it makes sense to do it with R-Motorsport and its parent company AF Racing, which is run by Aston Martin St Gallen chiefs Florian Kamelger and Andreas Baenziger.

"Our relationship goes back almost to the day that I joined the company, so it's four and a half years ago now," continues Palmer. "Florian and Andreas are running the St Gallen dealer, and they took quite a brave decision early on - they were one of the first believers in the plan [for road cars] that I'm managing.

"They invested a lot of money, frankly too much money in many respects! With them, you have almost evangelical promoters of the brand in Switzerland."

In 2018 R-Motorsport stepped into the limelight in GT3 competition - where works participation is banned but where most manufacturers offer strong support, including factory drivers - in the Blancpain GT Endurance Cup.

There was a victory at Silverstone in May, and shortly afterwards rumours of the planned DTM project began to swirl around the paddocks of Europe. But just because the DTM is what's perhaps best described as a quasi-works programme, that doesn't mean Aston Martin can jump in to the same extent as rivals Audi and BMW, and Mercedes before them.

"R-Motorsport come here as a partner," Palmer expands. "We are not BMW, we are not Audi, we don't have billions of dollars to spend on marketing, so every penny we spend as a small manufacturer needs to count.

"I can't compete on money, therefore I have to break the business model, I have to do something completely different. To break the business model we've moved into partnerships, which I think we're reasonably good at.

"We have a partnership with Mercedes-Benz, we have a partnership with Red Bull, we have a partnership with R-Motorsport. Now, is a Valkyrie an Aston Martin or is it a Red Bull? Is a Vantage a Mercedes or is it an Aston? Is the DTM car an R-Motorsport or an Aston?

"In each of those answers, you come to the conclusion that it's an Aston because it runs the heart and soul and culture of the company, but it's executed through very precise and very trusted partnerships, and I would put R-Motorsport in that category."

Palmer's lengthy period working in Japan for Nissan - 23 years - taught him that long-term partnerships work far better. Look at Japanese motorsport, where teams in the country's Super GT and Super Formula series have been with the same manufacturers for, in some cases, decades.

"We know which mountain we want to climb, we know how high it is, we're not far. We are still at the basecamp" Florian Kamelger

He views the relationship with R-Motorsport as such: "Short-term, expedient partnerships usually mean there are a winner and a loser [among the partners], but long-term partnerships mean that over that period of time you can have wins and losses, but they kind of even themselves out. These partnerships that we have - Daimler, Red Bull, Prodrive, R-Motorsport - they ebb and flow."

"Usually partnerships work if you create this win-win situation between the partners," interjects Kamelger. "For us as entrepreneurs, there is no one-year thinking; we think in long terms."

The performance of the Aston Martins was arguably the biggest talking point heading into the opening weekend. In dry conditions, the Vantages were at the rear at Hockenheim, but the fact that they weren't detached from the back of the pack was a good start.

Furthermore, points were scored in both races - thanks to Juncadella on Saturday and di Resta on Sunday - and di Resta even netted a qualifying point for third on the grid after the wet session on Saturday.

Of course, former Mercedes works team HWA is behind the design and build of the Astons, and some of the staff have transferred across from the German motorsport giant's Mercedes DTM squad to the Vantages, including di Resta's old Mercedes engineer Carlo Vermeulen - the Dutchman is again working with the Scot in 2019.

"We have a great technical partner in our joint venture with HWA," says Kamelger, the public face of R-Motorsport (Baenziger is very much in the background). "HWA has been the most successful team in DTM history. Nevertheless every year in such teams there is quite some fluctuation. We brought a couple of people in as well, and the team-finding process has not finished yet, which is good.

"We know which mountain we want to climb, we know how high it is, we're not far. We are still at the basecamp, but everybody who climbs mountains knows that the walk to the basecamp can be one of the toughest because it's the longest.

"There's nothing that you can really point out and say we have to work on this or we have to work on that because it obviously works quite well together already. Every single bit has to be optimised and has to get more efficient."

Di Resta agrees. "The team just asked me what is the one single thing we need to improve," he said after finishing seventh in Sunday's race. "I didn't have a word for that. I said, 'Everything'. OK, I'm not going to point fingers at anyone - I myself am going to do a proper job. So if everybody else can look at themselves and say that, then as a team that's the only way you can do it.

"It's not one thing. The departments know which is the weaker bit of the car, which is the weaker bit of performance. And myself, I could have done a better job, that's clear.

"Tactically we were sharp, we did a good job, but the speed of the car - there's no hiding it - is far from optimum" Paul di Resta

"I don't think we need to hide away from the fact of our performance. We knew this was a challenge this weekend in the dry; we were where we kind of expected, I think. That was the reality, but I don't think we could really calculate that properly until you do a proper qualifying session and then do a proper race. But that's set in now, and that shows you the work ahead and what you need to improve upon."

Di Resta made an inspired call to get into the pits after Loic Duval's Audi ploughed into the gravel in Sunday's race, thereby making his mandatory tyre stop for free. Once the stops had all shuffled out, he held a 15-second advantage over eventual winner Rene Rast's Audi.

In the previous era of DTM, without the new, torquey turbo cars asking so much of their tyres, that could have been enough to hold on for a shock win. As it was, he was already losing 3s per lap to Rast when he made a second stop with 12 laps remaining. On fresher rubber, di Resta was right on the bootlid of Timo Glock's sixth-placed BMW at the finish.

"This call [to pit] he made himself shows how precise and quickly he can think about things and decide," acknowledges Kamelger. "Of course track position helped him [the Astons were at the back of the field, giving more time for a decision], but you have to decide. He can be really proud of the place he was in at the end of the race."

"Tactically we were sharp, we did a good job, but the speed of the car - there's no hiding it - is far, far, far from optimum," added di Resta. "But I have to thank the team to get to where we are now, and now the only way is to improve and go up. We've had a difficult weekend - literally every single part of my car was brand new.

"The guys worked their arses off to get it ready, we had some technical issues [including brake problems putting him out of Saturday's race], but we scored on both days because of that top three in quali on Saturday and then the seventh on Sunday."

Juncadella earned the points for R-Motorsport on Saturday with ninth place. That was despite pitting at the end of lap one in the wet race, and then finding the tyres on which he was to go to the end of the race had no grip.

"My car has run smoothly throughout every session, I haven't had any reliability issues, any failures, nothing," he said after that race. "Performance? This is something we will find. It's a matter of time."

In Sunday's race, Juncadella had dropped just outside the top 10 in the late stages when a misfire struck. In short, it was a thoroughly respectable debut for R-Motorsport against the might of Audi and BMW for a project that was thrown together very late in the day.

"It is very satisfying for the team, and it is very important to point out the team in this respect because the boys can be bloody proud of this achievement in such a short period of time," says the sotto-voce Kamelger.

"Being there on the spot, not being far away, not even in one-lap performance, although we knew that would be the weakest point of the package, is very, very satisfying."

Satisfying too for Palmer, who knows that Aston Martin can use the DTM for traditional motorsport marketing purposes, even if he doesn't have the budget of his opposition.

"There are a lot of people who come and watch DTM," he says. "A lot of them are capable of affording an Aston, maybe didn't consider it before, but as they start to understand a little more about the brand, the heritage, the fact that it uses German technology as well so there's no reason to not buy, then maybe they fall in love. And if they fall in love then they buy."

And in the meantime, just listen to Palmer use the words 'we', 'us' and 'our' in relation to the DTM project, especially if R-Motorsport can use those extra test days for which they have secured dispensation to catch up - and rival - Audi and BMW.