Audi came out on top in the first encounter of the season: on Friday, Timo Scheider ended up first in the first free practice session at the Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg, followed by his fellow Audi drivers Martin Tomczyk and Mattias Ekström. DTM-rookies David Coulthard and Miguel Molina were classified 13th and 14th on their respective debuts.
Scheider set a fastest lap time of 1:33.691 minutes at the 4.574 kilometres long Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg. At the end of the 90 minutes’ session, Tomczyk was 0.431 seconds short of Scheider’s fastest lap time. On his fastest lap, Swedish driver Ekström was 0.766 seconds slower than Scheider. Behind the Audi trio, Jamie Green was the best-placed Mercedces-Benz driver in fourth place. Driving his 2008-spec AMG Mercedes C-Class, the Briton set a personal best time of 1:34.549 minutes. Mike Rockenfeller (Audi) ended up fifth, followed by Bruno Spengler (Mercedes-Benz). The top ten was completed by Oliver Jarvis, Alexandre Prémat, Markus Winkelhock (all Audi) and Paul Di Resta (Mercedes-Benz).
Bad luck for Miguel Molina on his DTM debut: after 57 minutes, the Spaniard damaged his Audi A4 DTM considerably. The session had to be interrupted for ten minutes.
On Satuday morning, the 18 drivers will have another free practice session from 9.30 h onwards. The first qualifying heat of the 2010 season will start at 13.45 h. The ARD will be broadcasting live on Saturday from 13.30 h.
- DTM
