Only 20 cars are entered for the full 2024 DTM season, marking the fewest entries seen in the championship since it first switched to GT3 regulations in 2021.
High operating costs, reduced manufacturer support and economic conditions at large have been cited as key reasons behind the decline in participation from last year, when 28 drivers took part in the series.
However, 17 drivers from 2023 are continuing in the DTM this year, including big-name tickets like Marco Wittmann, Rene Rast, Lucas Auer, Maro Engel and newly-crowned champion Thomas Preining.
Also returning to the category is Le Mans 24 Hours class winner Nicki Thiim, who will be competing with the SSR Performance Lamborghini team this year after an ill-fated debut with T3 Motorsport in 2022.
Van der Linde, now one of the four former title winners on the grid, feels there is no reason to be concerned about the grid being downsized by a third this season, as no top drivers have dropped off the series.
“I think we’ve lost 10 cars but I don’t think we’ve lost any quality,” the South African told Motorsport.com/Autosport.
“All the big names are there, and that’s obviously important for a championship like DTM to keep having guys like Rene and Marco, ex-champions, which keeps the name of DTM on a higher level.
“If you’re competing against the best drivers, that automatically puts the championship on a high level.”
The DTM has witnessed a number of dramatic crashes in its GT3 era, with the 2022 event at Hockenheim coming to mind as an event that was dominated by major accidents. Such was the extent of damage from the carnage that six drivers were forced to miss the final race of the year, with David Schumacher also sustaining a fracture to his lumbar vertebra.
Even last year, as the ADAC went back on the controversial standing restarts rule that was introduced by previous owner ITR, the DTM didn’t exactly have a season free of major incidents.
Most notably, two separate pile-ups brought out the red flag in the second race at the Sachsenring, with a number of cars left with too much damage to take the restart.
Van der Linde, who was himself involved in one of the two incidents, feels a smaller grid will automatically reduce the chances of first-lap wrecks.
“I don’t see it as less cars, I actually see it as positive in the sense that there’s less carnage on the start because last year sometimes it was pretty ridiculous with all the accidents that happened,” he explained.
“Just because there’s too many cars, people are trying to make positions on the start because they know that’s the only time that you can really gain anything out of the race.
“Because in the end, it’s difficult to pass a GT3 car. In that sense it’s going to be more down to qualifying now, less traffic, which means the laps are more fair, you don’t get blocked or anything where a guy that should be at the front starts at the back for example.
“I think it’s just more fair and you’ll see a true one at the end.”
