DTM: Spengler tops Friday practice

The Norisring is getting faster: as expected, lap times dropped significantly during the second DTM practice at the street circuit. After Bernd Schneider had topped the time sheets for a long time, his fellow Mercedes-Benz driver, Bruno Spengler, came out on top in the final seconds of the 90 minutes’ session. Last year’s winner lapped the 2.3 kilometers long circuit within 48.387 seconds. Second-placed Bernd Schneider was 0.021 seconds short of Spengler’s fastest time. Gary Paffett completed the Mercedes-Benz trio with his year-old car.

Audi works driver, Mattias Ekström, who had been fastest in the first practice session, was fourth in the second 90 minutes’ session behind the three Mercedes drivers. Jamie Green (Mercedes-Benz) was fifth from Timo Scheider and Martin Tomczyk (both Audi). Maro Engel and Paul di Resta (Mercedes-Benz) completed the top ten ahead of tenth-placed Winkelhock.

In the second DTM test, the lap times were very close together. Susie Stoddart in 19th place was almost eight tenths of a second short of Spengler’s fastest lap time. Markus Winkelhock, who ranked tenth in the second session, was 0.416 seconds slower than Spengler on the fastest of the 65 laps he completed in total. Apart from Katherine Legge, Alexandre Prémat and Susie Stoddart in 17th to 19th place, all drivers succeeded in toppling Ekström´s fastest lap time from the first test.

After free practice of the DTM on Saturday morning (9.30 h), the battle for the grid positions will start in the afternoon. From 13.28 h, drivers have to get their act together in qualifying (live on ARD from 13.30), as overtaking isn’t easy at the only street circuit on the DTM calendar. A good qualifying result on Saturday can be the basis for a good race result on Sunday.