– When the starting lights at the DTM season opener turn green, a total of 21 drivers (all drivers checked) will begin the hunt for the first victory of the new season. However, a look into motorsport history shows: A victory in the first race is not a reliable indicator for winning the title later.
Read more Stefano Domenicali: What Formula 1 wants to learn from US sports
Since the beginning of the “new” DTM in 2000, spanning the past 26 seasons, the winner of the opening race has only managed to win the championship and claim the title eight times at the end of the year. This corresponds to a rate of around 30 percent. A victory in the opener therefore has little significance.
Lamborghini driver Franck Perera knows this particularly well: The Frenchman, who then drove for the SSR team, opened the 2023 season with a victory in Oschersleben, but could not maintain this level throughout the rest of the season. Although he managed to get on the podium twice more, each time in third place, in the end it was only enough for tenth place overall.
Photo gallery: All DTM opening race winners since the 2000 season
Perera is rather an exception, as the majority of opening race winners remained present in the extended title fight after a strong start to the season. In concrete terms, this means: Ten DTM drivers who won the first race still finished the season as vice-champions.
Read more WRC comeback this weekend: Why Sordo is so looking forward to it
Only five winners of the DTM season opener even fell out of the top 3 in the overall standings at the end of the championship. In other words: Whoever wins the first race in Spielberg statistically has a probability of around 73 percent of finishing the season among the top three drivers.
However, the statistics also show another trend from the recent past: Since the beginning of the GT3 era in 2021, no opening race winner has managed to win the championship title at the end of the season. The last time a driver achieved this feat was in the 2016 season.
Which driver won the opener back then and also took the title at the end of the year, and which current driver carries a veritable “opener curse” because he has already won the first race of the season three times but always missed out on the overall victory, is revealed in our photo gallery with all DTM opening race winners since 2000.
Read more Aprilia-CEO Rivola: Thanks to “courage for innovation” for the MotoGP top spot
