Free practice at the Motorsport Arena Oschersleben ended with five Audi cars in front. Fastest driver in the final session before qualifying was Martin Tomczyk with the Red Bull Audi A4 DTM. The driver from Rosenheim set the fastest time in the morning with 1:20.375 minutes. Second place went to his team-mate Mattias Ekström, who was 0.115 seconds down on Tomczyk’s fastest lap time. Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Tom Kristensen and Frank Stippler completed the impressive performance by the Audi-drivers in third, fourth and fifth place respectively. Fifth-placed Stippler was also the best driver with year-old machinery.
“On my fastest lap, I still had two or three slight mistakes“, fastest driver Tomczyk admitted. “You have to drive very precisely to get this lap time. But we are well sorted and we have made a big step forward from yesterday to today.” With the twinkling of an eye, he added: “Of course, I would like to have this result in qualifying as well.”
Fastest Mercedes driver: Alex Margaritis
The drivers in sixth to tenth place will obviously also like to have their results in qualifying, as they are all drivers with cars from last year. Alexandros Margaritis put his Easy Rent AMG Mercedes C-Class in sixth place and was best-placed Mercedes-Benz-driver. Stefan Mücke was seventh from Pierre Kaffer, Jean Alesi and Christian Abt in tenth. Only twelfth was the best-placed Mercedes-driver with a current car: Jamie Green was 0.879 seconds down on the fastest time.
Bad luck for Timo Scheider, who lost both right-hand doors of his car under braking before the first corner after the main straight. “That happened suddenly, without any warning. Normally, you notice something like that earlier“, the unfortunate driver said.
Wind causes interruption
The wind caused the light system above the Oschersleben track to vibrate so heavily, that the session had to be interrupted after 34 minutes. To ensure the safety of all the DTM drivers, the session had to be interrupted for 21 minutes in order to remove the advertising banners that were mounted to these installations. After that, the session continued.
- DTM
Technorati Tags: Audi, DTM, A4, Oschersleben, oneighturbo
