Paffett fastest in wet warm-up

The Circuit Park Zandvoort had put on its grey and wet outfit for warm-up of the DTM. Whilst the previous two days were dominated by sunshine and high wind, these two elements were absent on Sunday morning, providing the teams and drivers of Audi and Mercedes-Benz with a new task. Gary Paffett made the best out of these difficult conditions. With his AMG Mercedes C-Class, the 2005 DTM champion set the fastest time of 1:48.330 minutes. Mattias Ekström was second with his Audi A4 DTM, 0.367 seconds down. Alexandros Margaritis ended up third.

range of drivers exceeded the limit in warm-up and spun off the track, among them Susie Stoddart, Daniel la Rosa, Christian Abt and Mika Häkkinen. The incidents didn’t have any effects and all drivers were able to continue their session. Due to technical problems, warm-up was over for Lucas Luhr after six laps already. The Audi driver crawled back to the pits at low speed. “In the first few laps, everything was all right, but then all of a sudden, the brakes didn’t work anymore”, said Luhr. “We still don’t know what has caused the problem, but we will try to repair it.”

For the first time during this weekend, Timo Scheider, who will be starting from pole-position for this afternoon’s race, wasn’t the fastest man in the field. The German was ranked 13th, 1.439 seconds down. The seventh DTM round of the season will start at 13.00 h. The drivers have to complete 38 laps at the 4.307 kilometres long circuit on the North Sea and will be covering a total distance of 163.666 kilometres.