 Christian Bakkerud joined the series coming from GP2 Series along with Formula Renault BARC driver Johannes Seidlitz both joining the Colin Kolles owned Futurecom-TME team with Czech Touring Car Championship racer Tomáš Kostka joining sister-team Futurecom-BRT.Christijan Albers left DTM to pursue sports car racing with Kolles' Le Mans Series team and the most successful driver in the history of DTM, four-time champion Bernd Schneider retired from the sport.The series adopted new rule changes, as announced on 21 April 2009.