There is a hard cap on the amount of private testing allowed in the DTM this year, with teams not permitted to freely run their GT3 cars outside of race weekends from the beginning of this month.
Although the exact details about the restrictions imposed by the ADAC have not been made public, Autosport understands that each team will be allowed five days of testing per driver. Sanctions for any violations are yet to be determined.
Until last year, the DTM’s top outfits were spending as much as a third of their budget on private testing, with some of them running their car on every track on the calendar except the Norisring street circuit.
Double champion Wittmann, whose previous teams Project 1 and Walkenhorst could only complete a limited number of test days due to budget constraints, feels it was important for the ADAC to keep the cost of running a DTM programme in check as the series enters its fourth season of GT3 regulations.
"I think it's a good plan," the German told Autosport. "I don't know the full outcome yet and what's behind it, but in general it's a good topic because we still have customer racing, it's not driven by the factory teams or by the manufacturers.
"You need to reduce the testing because at one stage we will face the problem that all the teams will step out of the DTM because the costs will explode to the moon.
"It's a good topic to address, and if we can find a way to have a decent window with some test days but restricted to the amount of tests they run, it would help a lot.
"It would help the championship, it would help the teams and it will reduce the costs."
BMW dream team
Wittmann will move across from the now-defunct Project 1 team to Schubert Motorsport in 2024, forming an all-star line-up alongside fellow champions Rene Rast and Sheldon van der Linde.
It follows calls from Wittmann to be given the same tools as other factory drivers Rast and van der Linde, having felt he couldn’t compete at the front with the underfunded Project 1 outfit last year.
The 34-year-old feels having three top-line drivers in a single factory-supported team will push BMW forward this year as it aims to wrestle back the crown in 2024.
"It's nice to be in the DTM again," he said. "The last two years were not very easy for me. Now we have the same conditions, I need to fully push.
"We have a strong line-up. We bring a lot of experience to the team. We can also help the team to go forward, maybe to improve the set-up work, or we can even share set-up work and so on in testing or when you prepare for the race weekends."
Wittmann recorded his worst-ever DTM campaign in 2023, failing to muster a podium all season and ending up a distant 13th in the championship with just 91 points on the board.
It was a far cry from the kind of results he used to achieve in the Class 1 days of the DTM, when he led BMW’s full-factory assault on the series with various iterations of the M4.
Asked if he could now replicate the form he enjoyed during the golden, manufacturer-heavy era of the series, he said: "I hope so! I hope so. This is always the goal.
"The last two years were difficult so I didn't really have expectations on this. Now obviously the aim is to go, definitely to make again a step forward compared to the last two years, and then we see.
"Obviously still hunting for wins and for podiums. My wish is to repeat the success from the Class 1 times, so I will give my best."
