Over six years of planning and collaboration between the Autobacs Super GT Series and the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM), and the formation of the unified Class One technical regulation will culminate in a showdown of the best from DTM and the GT500 class of Super GT this November.
On Friday, the GT Association (GTA), promoter of Super GT, as well as the ITR, promoter of the DTM series, formally announced the Super GT / DTM Special Exchange Battle, a special exhibition event at Fuji Speedway to be held on Saturday and Sunday, 23-24 November.
Twelve teams from the DTM and twelve teams from the GT500 class of Super GT will take part in two exhibition sprint races, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday.
A control tyre will be supplied to all teams by Hankook Tyre, DTM’s official tyre supplier. The Super GT teams will not have to change drivers during either race – one of their drivers will run on Saturday, the other on Sunday, against the single-driver DTM teams.
In addition, Super GT’s three GT500 manufacturers, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota (Lexus), will send one car each to participate as wildcard entries in the DTM’s 2019 season finale at the Hockenheimring in Germany, on Saturday 5 October and Sunday 6 October.
“The joint race meeting of DTM and Super GT finally can be realised,” said Masaaki Bandoh, the chairman of the GT Association.
“I’d love to thank ITR and its Chairman Gerhard Berger for their collaboration. Furthermore, I thank the Fuji Speedway officials who were actively involved in the realisation of our plan. I’m really delighted that we are going to jointly organise this event.”
It’s the culmination of a journey that began in 2013 with the three-party Steering Committee of the GTA, DTM, and IMSA (who later departed the Steering Committee). DTM and Super GT cars ran on track together for the first time in 2017 at Hockenheim and at Twin Ring Motegi, and in June 2018, the unified Class One technical regulation was finalized between Super GT and DTM, with the goal of this crossover event always in sight, now finally a reality.
More details on the Super GT / DTM Special Battle will be revealed in the months leading up to the race in November.
Image courtesy of the GT Association (GTA)
