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Spa Test Day Two

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The weather forecasters had predicted changeable condition for the four days of testing at Spa-Francorchamps, and indeed: Following a sunny first day of the second official DTM test, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Opel had to continue testing in rainy conditions.

On a correspondingly wet track on Wednesday, with Opel’s Heinz-Harald Frentzen being the most successful driver when it came to coping with the wet Ardennes rollercoaster. Quite obviously, Frentzen was clearly slower than yesterday when he had also set the fastest lap time, but once again, he was the fastest driver of the day. At the end of nine hours of testing behind the wheel of Opel’s 2005 spec test car, the German set a fastest lap time of 2:29.403 minutes, with Jean Alesi, the second fastest, being nearly eight tenths of a second slower, in his AMG-Mercedes C-Class and Marcel Fässler setting the third fastest time with his Opel Vectra GTS V8.

“I set my fastest lap in the afternoon, when it wasn’t raining that much, for a short period of time,” admitted Frentzen. “Spa represents a special challenge for every racing driver. Particularly at the downhill sectors, the water is running across the track like rivulets. Therefore, you have to be extremely careful, in these conditions, as you may experience aquaplaning, at any time.” In addition to Frentzen, Marcel Fässler, Laurent Aiello and Manuel Reuter were also busy testing for Opel and finished third, fourth and eighth respectively.

Jean Alesi in his AMG-Mercedes C-Class finished second on the time sheets. At the 6.976-kilometre circuit, the French set a personal fastest lap time of 2:30.242 minutes, thus being some eight tenth of a second slower than Frentzen. The other Mercedes-Benz drivers contesting the second day of testing at Spa-Francorchamps were Jamie Green, Bernd Schneider, Bruno Spengler and Alexandros Margaritis.

The Audi drivers, however, covered clearly less testing kilometres than their competitors. Just as it was the case on Tuesday, Christian Abt (tenth on the time sheets) once again succeeded in setting the fastest lap time of the Audi drivers, with Rinaldo Capello, Pierre Kaffer, Martin Tomczyk and Frank Stippler finishing 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th. Tomczyk, who had been behind the wheel of the 2005 spec Audi A4 DTM during its first public appearance, yesterday, was satisfied in spite of the difficult conditions.

“We succeeded in completing our scheduled programme, despite the rain,” said Tomczyk, “And we have gained a lot of positive results. I felt comfortable in the new car right from the start and I’m convinced that it will provide us drivers with many reasons to cheer about, this year. Spa-Francorchamps is extremely demanding, and even more so in the wet. But behind the wheel of the Audi A4 DTM, the famous sections such as the Eau Rouge are big fun.” Frank Stippler, however, experienced a blessing in disguise. After only four laps on the wet track, the DTM rookie had to endure an aquaplaning experience and crashed massively into the crash barriers, thus seriously damaging his Audi A4 DTM. Thanks to the great safety equipment of the DTM cars, Stippler could leave his car virtually unharmed and suffered only slight bruises and a cut in his hand.

The last official DTM tests prior to the season kick-off, held on 17th April at Hockenheim, will be continued until Friday.