At hardly any other DTM race track, the lap times are so closely together. In free practice on Saturday morning, all 19 drivers were within one second. The fastest time was set by Jamie Green with the 2008-spec AMG Mercedes C-Class in 48.405 seconds. On his fastest lap, the Brit was 0.061 seconds faster than his fellow Mercedes-Benz driver Bruno Spengler with an AMG Mercedes C-Class of the current season. Third place was taken by Mattias Ekström with the fastest of the Audi A4 DTM cars.
19th placed Christian Bakkerud was less than one second short of the fastest time. In the first and final practice session before qualifying (ARD live from 13.30 h) the Dane from the Kolles Futurecom TME team was only 0.994 seconds short. Bakkerud, who is driving a DTM car at the Norisring for the first time, drove the longest distance with 86 laps.
Behind Green, Spengler and Ekström, defending DTM champion Timo Scheider ended up fourth from Mercedes-Benz driver Ralf Schumacher. Gary Paffett, winner of the second season round at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz, was sixth. Alexandre Prémat, Paul Di Resta, Mathias Lauda and Maro Engel completed the top 10.
Bad luck for Markus Winkelhock: 20 minutes into the session, the German hit a manhole cover on the main straight and severely damaged his car in the process. All manhole covers along the 2.3 kilometres long track have been fixed with special screws. The screws of the cover that caused the accident were broken due to metal fatigue. Free practice could be re-started at 10.35 h.
The battle for the best grid positions for the season highlight at the Norisring will start at 13.35 h. ARD will be broadcasting qualifying live from 13.30 h. Last year, Canadian Mercedes-Benz driver Bruno Spengler secured pole position.
Looking for more? Have a look below.
- DTM: Mattias Ekstrom fastest driver in Audi’s “quattro”
- DTM: Mattias Ekstrom claims first pole of season with Audi sweeping top 5 in qualifying
- DTM: Ekstrom sets first fastest time at Le Mans
- DTM: The champion sets the first fastest time at the Norisring
- DTM: Ekstrom first driver to set fastest time in Mugello
