Augusto Farfus tops first day of testing at Hockenheim

Augusto Farfus and BMW Motorsport have dominated the time sheets in the first day of the official 2016 pre-season tests for the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters in Hockenheim.

The Brazilian from Team MTEK clocked a best lap of 1:33.326 in his M4 DTM, ahead of fellow BMW driver Maxime Martin, who was 0.326 seconds off the pace.

Audi Sport had a strong showing in the first day of testing, having dominated the morning session with Timo Scheider and Nico Müller. In the afternoon, the Swiss driver from Team Abt was third overall and best for the Ingolstadt manufacturer, ahead of team-mates Miguel Molina and Scheider.

Müller was satisfied with the day’s work: “I’m pretty happy with how the day went, obviously the conditions could have been a bit better, there was a lot of wet running, which was good, but there was also some mixed running with the damp track, and that was a bit of lost time. When the conditions were good we were gathering lots of useful information, so I would say it has been a good start for 2016.”

BMW’s Martin Tomczyk set the sixth fastest time of the day. Timo Glock, who moves to Team RMG this year, was tenth in the morning session, but unable to run in the afternoon. Adrien Tambay was seventh and last of the Audis RS 5 DTM.

Maximilian Götz was eighth in the afternoon, setting the fastest time of the day for Mercedes AMG, who focussed on set-up work on the new C63 DTM. Daniel Juncadella, 2016 rookie Esteban Ocon and Lucas Auer completed the classification.

Rain hit Hockenheim 15 minutes before the end of the session, with ITR using the remaining time to test slow zones ahead of the 2016 season.