The first DTM test at the Circuit Park Zandvoort ended with five Audis on the first five places. Fastest driver of the brand with the four rings on Friday morning was Martin Tomczyk. The driver from Rosenheim set a fastest lap time of 1:34.758 minutes with his Audi A4 DTM on the 4.307 kilometres long track and was 0.027 seconds faster than Gary Paffett’s DTM lap record at the track. After 90 minutes of testing, his fellow-Audi driver Christian Abt was second with his one-year old car, exactly matching the lap record of 1:34.758 minutes. The Audi-dominance was completed by Tom Kristensen in third, Mattias Ekström in fourth and Timo Scheider in fifth position.
Fastest driver with a Mercedes-Benz was Bruno Spengler. The Canadian had been fourth behind the trio Kristensen, Ekström and Scheider for a long time, but then was pushed back into sixth after the fast lap times of Tomczyk and Abt. Spengler’s fastest lap time with the AMG-Mercedes C-Class was 1:35.497 minutes, 0.739 seconds slower than Tomczyk. Mika Häkkinen was seventh behind Nürburgring-winner Spengler.
Ranking eighth with his 2004-spec Audi, Nicolas Kiesa made it into the top 10 and placed ahead of stalwart Jean Alesi and Stefan Mücke, both driving 2005-spec AMG-Mercedes C-Classes. DTM record champion and points leader, Bernd Schneider, occupied 13th place. Alexandros Margaritis only racked up little mileage in testing, as he had to park his AMG-Mercedes C-Class in the pits after five laps and then watched testing action from the pit wall. “On the first lap, we were already having trouble with the steering”, the Greek explained.
