Ekström fastest in the afternoon

The sun is burning over Nuremberg and Mattias Ekström is striving towards another success. After setting the third fastest time in the first test, the Swede stayed cool on Friday afternoon with temperatures over 35 degrees and set the fastest time of 49.228 seconds with his Red Bull Audi A4 DTM.

With the DaimlerChrysler Bank AMG-Mercedes C-Class, Bruno Spengler was only 0.023 seconds slower than “Eki” and set the second fastest time. In the second test, the competition was even closer than in the morning: at the end of the session, 18th placed Daniel La Rosa was only 0.587 seconds down on Ekström’s fastest time.

Just like in the first test, Jean Alesi caused a small surprise in the second session on Friday afternoon. In the morning, the Frenchman had been second fastest. In the second 90 minutes’ session, he took his 2005-spec AMG-Mercedes C-Class to the third fastest time behind Ekström and Spengler. With Alex Margaritis in fifth place, Stefan Mücke in seventh and Timo Scheider in ninth place, three more drivers with year-old cars made it into the top ten. Jeroen Bleekemolen, back in the DTM since the last race at Brands Hatch, scored another good result with the 2004-spec Audi A4 DTM from the Futurecom TME team after finishing sixth in the morning: in the second session, the Dutchman was twelfth.

In the second test, Susie Stoddart failed to complete one timed lap. After the first test, a leak occurred on the oil tank of her AMG-Mercedes C-Class. This happened after the young Scottish lady racer had run over a screw at the track that was blown up by the crank shaft and went through the oil tank. The Mücke team had to take the engine out in order to get the tank repaired.