DTM: Paffett says first-race pit stops unlikely

Former DTM champion Gary Paffett isn't expecting many pit stops during Saturday races in 2015, following the release of the series' new double-header weekend format.

Each event will feature a 40-minute race on Saturday and a 60-minute Sunday race, with grids set by standalone qualifying sessions. The biggest difference, though, is that pit stops to change tyres will be optional on Saturday and mandatory on Sunday.

Paffett says that he believes teams will manage the shorter race so as to avoid stopping.

"I think everybody will," he said. "There was some discussion as to whether the tyre supplier wanted to have a pit stop or not in a 40-minute race. But with the tires we are using, the majority of the circuits are low deg, so I don't expect that in a 40-minute race anyone will want to make a pit stop.

"It's not going to be an advantage, competitiveness-wise, so I don't see anyone wanting to stop."

BETTER TITLE FIGHT PREDICTED

The Mercedes veteran, who switches to DTM newcomer ART Grand Prix for the 2015 season, is a big fan of the returning double-header format.

"I've been saying for years that we don't have enough races," he said. "First of all there's not enough actual races, so you don't get enough time to score points. If you have a bad race, or a failure, you can lose a tenth of your points and it's very tough to make that up over the course of a season.

"Now we have one less weekend, but we have 18 races – which is 18 opportunities to score points. I think the move to two races is a great decision.

"The length of the races, to us it doesn't really matter as long as we have one race with a pit stop for a bit of strategy, so it's not a problem to have a sprint race on the Saturday."

Audi's head of DTM Dieter Gass backed up Paffett's claims that the move to 18 races will be better for the title fight.

"One or two races without points does not automatically mean there is no longer a chance of winning the championship," said Gass, who described not stopping in the Saturday races as "basically not a problem."

"I'm assuming that we're going to see more drivers in the battle for the title for a longer time. We extensively discussed the new format for a long time. I think we came up with a good approach."

Originally on Autosport.com