Gary Paffett on top in final practice as BMW close up to Mercedes
ART Mercedes driver Gary Paffett again demonstrated strong pace for Mercedes at the Dutch circuit of Zandvoort, topping the time sheets in the 30-minute second free practice session, but BMW have closed the gap with four cars in the top ten and with Marco Wittmann close behind the Briton.
Paffett set his best time of the session with five minutes remaining to demote Mercedes colleague Daniel Juncadella, who would slip to third following a late improvement from BMW Team RMG’s Wittmann.
The session got off to a rough start for ART, with Paffett’s team-mate Esteban Ocon running wide at Turn 9 and burying his C63 DTM in the gravel trap.
The incident was managed by the deployment of a slow zone, but four drivers were found to be in breach of this and given a bad sportsmanship flag, including Mercedes drivers Christian Vietoris and Lucas Auer, the Audi of Miguel Molina and the BMW of Maxime Martin.
The times continued to tumble during the last part of the session, with many best laps set in the last few seconds. Audi Sport Team Abt’s Mattias Ekström ended up as the best-placed driver for the marque with the fourth fastest time, and the only Audi in the top 13, ahead of the HWA Mercedes of Maximilian Götz.
Tom Blomqvist was sixth quickest in the RBM BMW M4, leading the two fellow BMWs of Timo Glock and Nico Müller, with the Mercedes of Christian Vietoris and Paul di Resta completing the top ten.
“Since yesterday we’ve been competitive,” said Paffett. “OK it’s only practice, but the car’s working well. We’ve been having a problem free weekend so far so hopefully that’ll continue.”
Qualifying is up next with a 20-minute session at 15:45 CET to set today’s Race 1 grid, which takes place at 18:10 CET.
