Häkkinen sets fastest time in warm-up

Warm-up on Sunday morning already gave a little appetizer of what is awaiting the drivers today in the third DTM season round: with temperatures around 23 degrees, the Audi and Mercedes-Benz teams had the final opportunity to test before the race. Mika Häkkinen was the coolest, claiming the number one position with his AMG Mercedes C-Class in the final second. With a lap time of 1:19.753 minutes, the two times’ Formula 1 world champion outpaced junior driver Paul di Resta by 0.185 seconds. Before that, the Scotsman had been in the lead for a long time. DTM record champion Bernd Schneider was third, 0.358 down on team-mate Häkkinen.

The fastest Audi A4 DTM was driven by Adam Carroll, who came out sixth behind Bruno Spengler and Gary Paffett. Like in qualifying, the drivers with 2007-spec A4s failed to make their mark. The quickest one of them was Timo Scheider in tenth from Mattias Ekström. Martin Tomczyk and Markus Winkelhock were 16th and 18th respectively. “When everything is running well, we can perhaps make up a few positions in the race”, said Ekström, who will be starting from ninth place on the grid. “Still, we have to be realistic: when nothing goes wrong for Mercedes, they will be hard to beat.”

In warm conditions on Sunday morning, the 20 DTM drivers worked on the right set-up for the race, that will start at 14.00 h. The ARD is broadcasting live from 13.45 h. Once again, the weather is very friendly: temperatures of 28 degrees are forecast for the race. There is a moderate wind from the east.