Aitken Confirms Departure from DTM, Emil Frey Racing

Photo: Emil Frey Racing

Jack Aitken has confirmed that he will not continue in DTM next year amid his increased Cadillac program, in what marks a “goodbye for now” with Emil Frey Racing after a five-year stint with the Swiss squad.

The ex-open wheel ace got his start in sports car racing with Emil Frey, initially in GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS in 2021, which was marred by a serious accident at the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa that left him on the sidelines with multiple injuries. including a broken collarbone and a fractured vertebra, for ten weeks.

Aitken, however, rebounded to become a race winner with Lorenz Frey-Hilti-run team in ADAC GT Masters the following year, alongside a parallel GTWC Europe Endurance Cup campaign.

He then made his DTM debut in 2023, scoring a win at the Lausitzring, in what marked his first year with Cadillac as Action Express Racing’s Michelin Endurance Cup driver in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

Aitken claimed five more wins with Emil Frey in DTM competition alongside his parallel commitments with Action Express, which expanded into a full-time seat in 2024, and for next year, will also include a season-long program with Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA in the FIA World Endurance Championship.

While there are remarkably no clashes between the German-based DTM series and both the WeatherTech Championship and WEC, it’s understood that Aitken’s increased program with the Cadillac V-Series.R made contesting all three championships impossible.

“It’s goodbye for now to the team that started my career in tin tops, sports cars, endurance, post-F1-dreaming, whatever you want to call it,” he wrote on social media.

“Emil Frey Racing [has] been a huge part of my life for the last five years. As a professional race team they let me become a professional (paid) race driver.

“We worked, learned, argued, shouted, laughed and got comfortable, just to do it all over.

“We had seasons where there was continuity and we refined the heck out of ourselves, and we had seasons where everything changed so we scrambled to make it work.

“I drove Italian cars in a Swiss team with people from pretty much everywhere. It was damn fun. I had some magical moments and tragic ones too here.”

Aitken specifically pointed out his Spa accident and how the Swiss organization rallied around him.

“I think a lot of you have seen my crash there, and it left me in a hospital far away from home, with no family or loved ones at the event to watch me,” he said.

“Heavily drugged I was asleep as the race carried on, but I woke up to Lorenz Frey-Hilti, my bosses’ boss, in the corner of my room.

“He stayed with me, against my insistence that he go back to the bloody race, and barely left my side in 24 hours at the hospital until my now wife came to save me.

“What’s more, years later when team members talk about that crash and the emotion they felt watching me in the middle of it with zero comms about my condition, it always brings a tear to my eye. Because they care dammit.. About me, about this silly sport, and I love them for it. Always will.

“May the paddocks be small, and our meetings many, see you again soon Emil Frey family.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John