DTM will be undergoing a major change in 2023, as owner Gerhard Berger has surprisingly decided to sell the promotional rights of the series to German automobile club ADAC.
Berger has strong links with Red Bull having been sponsored by the team back in his racing days and then going on to co-own Toro Rosso between 2006-2008, the team which is now known as AlphaTauri.
With Berger pulling out of DTM it seemed only a matter of time until Red Bull followed suit and ended their involvement with the series, having previously financed AF Corse for the past two seasons.
“Red Bull is very much linked to me as a person via the almost forty-year partnership,” said the Austrian when asked if Red Bull would follow him out of DTM.
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“That decision is now up to Red Bull.”
It has now been confirmed by the energy drink giants that they will not be involved with AF Corse in 2023, ending their participation in DTM after two years.
AF Corse won the DTM championship in 2021 with Liam Lawson and Alex Albon and Nick Cassidy, but struggled to a seventh-place finish in 2022 after Lawson and Albon left to compete in F2 and F1 respectively.
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A change in Red Bull’s involvement in motorsport was likely following the tragic passing of the energy drink giant’s owner Dietrich Mateschitz earlier this year, with some rumours circulating that Red Bull’s involvement in Formula 1 could even come to an end.
Chief advisor Helmut Marko has told reporters that Red Bull have plenty more to achieve in Formula 1 and therefore will remain in the sport for the foreseeable future after their internal restructure.
The future of AlphaTauri however is still up for debate, as it has been suggested that Red Bull could sell the team to the likes of Calvin Lo to focus on a single team rather than two, as Lo stands at the front of the queue of billionaires looking to invest in Formula 1 having failed to enter an independent team.