BMW Team RBM’s Augusto Farfus set the pace in free practice for the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters at Zandvoort in the Netherlands, as he beat Audi’s Edoardo Mortara and Adrien Tambay to the fastest time.
Click here for the full free practice times.
Brazilian Farfus, who is the only man who can beat Mike Rockenfeller to the DTM title, went fastest by 0.184 seconds with just eight minutes remaining in the hour and a half session. Farfus had been running in the top five throughout the practice session.
Italian Mortara had been fastest for much of the session but had to settle for second, despite a spin late in the session, ahead of Frenchman Tambay.
BMW Team MTEK’s Marco Wittman was fourth fastest, ahead of a trio of driver’s who all managed to post identical best laptimes. Martin Tomczyk was classified as fifth, ahead of Rockenfeller in sixth and Bruno Spengler in seventh, with the order determined by the driver who posted the time first.
Timo Scheider was eighth fastest, ahead of fellow Audi driver Miguel Molina who made it five Audi’s inside the top ten.
Tenth-placed Christian Vietoris was the only Mercedes-Benz driver to make it into the top ten in practice, 0.491 seconds off the pace.
The other five Mercedes’ drivers all struggled for pace in the session and propped up the bottom of the timesheets. Gary Paffett was 18th ahead of Roberto in Merhi in 19th, with Daniel Juncadella, Pascal Wehrlein and Robert Wickens slowest of all, more than a second off the pace.
Qualifying takes place at 14:40 CEST (13:40 BST) and will be streamed LIVE on TouringCars.Net.