Spengler first to top the time sheets

The DTM season highlight has started. The first test at the 2.3 kilometres short Norisring saw Bruno Spengler topping the time sheets with 49.411 seconds with his AMG Mercedes C-Class. After 42 laps, the Franco-Canadian beat his fellow-Mercedes driver Paul di Resta by 0.031 seconds.

With Bernd Schneider and Mika Häkkinen in third and fourth place, two further Mercedes-Benz drivers ranked ahead of the fastest Audi driver, Alexandre Prémat, who was fifth. The Frenchman was 0.193 seconds down.

At his comeback in the DTM, Tom Kristensen occupied ninth place, which made him the best-placed driver with a 2007-spec Audi A4 DTM. After his accident during the season opener at Hockenheim, the Dane was sidelined for quite a long time and made his return to the cockpit of a DTM car during the fourth round at Brands Hatch a fortnight ago, albeit a Audi race taxi. Kristensen made his racing comeback last week during the Le Mans 24 Hours.

In the first test on Friday morning, competition already was close. All the way down to Lucas Luhr, who was 15th with his Audi A4 DTM, the times of the DTM drivers ranged within half a second, the first 19 drivers in the 90 minutes’ test on Friday morning were all within one second. Only Vanina Ickx was more than one second down, her best lap time at the Norisring was 50.473 seconds.