Mercedes’ Jamie Green was the fastest driver in Saturday’s morning free practice session for the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters around the Norisring street circuit, just 0.009 seconds ahead of BMW’s Martin Tomczyk.
Click here for the full second practice times.
Green’s time came during the second 45 minutes of the free practice session, when he set a lap of 48.755 seconds, some 1.1 seconds fastesr than the best time from Friday’s session. Tomczyk had been seventh in the session before the reigning champion set a time at the end of the session that was a mere 0.009 seconds slower than Green.
Current championship leader Gary Paffett was third fastest, just ahead of Canadian Bruno Spengler in fourth.
Mattias Ekström was the top Audi driver in fifth, although the Abt Sportsline driver had been fastest at the half-way point of the session. Ralf Schumacher ended the session sixth fastest – once again showing strong pace after he went second fastest in Friday’s first practice session.
BMW drivers Augusto Farfus and Dirk Werner were next up in seventh and eighth. Audi Sport Team Rosberg’s Austria winner Edoardo Mortara and team-mate Filipe Albuquerque ended the session in ninth and tenth having completed the most laps during the session.
The session ended with four BMW’s, three Mercedes’ and three Audi’s inside the top ten, highlighting how close the 2012 DTM is even around a street circuit at which none of the team’s have been able to test their new cars.
Continuing to struggle with their BMW M3 DTM cars during the session were Joey Hand, 18th quickest, and Andy Priaulx, 21st quickest. Hand is racing with a new chassis this weekend, whilst Priaulx suffered what appeared to be a front-suspension failure as he approached turn one in the second half of the session.
Qualifying takes place at 1510 Berlin time (1410 GMT).