Porsche shows off at the DTM practice opener at the Nürburgring not only with Dennis Olsen’s fastest time – AMG also strong with larger restrictor
The first practice session after the eight-week DTM summer break at the Nürburgring took place under overcast skies and temperatures of around 20 degrees Celsius: And the fastest time of the day was secured by SSR Porsche driver Dennis Olsen, who lapped the sprint circuit over the short approach in 1:26.326.
“We want to continue where we left off,” the Norwegian alluded to Porsche’s maiden DTM victory at the Norisring. “This could be a good track for us. So we’re going full throttle.”
Norisring winner Thomas Preining proved that Porsche is strong once again, finishing 0.136 seconds behind. The Austrian finished fourth in the day’s standings just ahead of SSR Porsche driver Laurens Vanthoor (+0.177), putting three Porsche 911 GT3 R in the Top 5.
AMG in second place with larger restrictor
Mercedes-AMG also presented themselves well with the one-millimetre larger restrictor: HRT driver Luca Stolz (+0.027) in second and GruppeM drivers Mikael Grenier and Maro Engel as well as Stolz’s teammate Arjun Maini in seventh to ninth rounded off the day’s results.
DTM leader Mirko Bortolotti also cut a good figure on Friday: the Grasser Lamborghini driver set the best time in the first practice session in 1:26.414, which was enough for third place in the end. The Italian was thus the best driver of the Italian marque.
In the end, BMW were also among the front runners: DTM runner-up Sheldon van der Linde drove his M4 GT3 to sixth place, 0.213 seconds behind the leader. In addition, the car from Munich again shone with a very good top speed and was three km/h faster than the fastest Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Best Audi in tenth place: “We are still missing some time “
Audi just managed to finish tenth in the day’s standings on Friday through Abt driver Kelvin van der Linde: The South African recorded a gap of 0.312 seconds, which is not much. Nevertheless, he was only partially satisfied: “We have some work to do. The feeling in the car is obviously very good, but we’re still missing a bit in terms of lap time, even though everything is extremely close.”
Team-mate Rene Rast, who is third in the championship, was 0.174 seconds slower than his teammate, which was enough for 18th place in the second practice session. The Abt team was the only racing team not to test at the Nürburgring for the DTM in the run-up to the weekend, but they had expressed satisfaction with the basic set-up.
AF Corse far behind on Friday
The weakest manufacturer on Friday was Ferrari: AF Corse driver Nick Cassidy ended up 0.470 seconds behind with his time from the first free practice session, which put him 17th in the day’s standings.
The DTM is stepping on the gas this weekend at the Nürburgring pic.twitter.com/jzpUQCxb2j
– Motorsport-Total.com (@MST_DTM) August 26, 2022
Walkenhorst guest driver Theo Oeverhaus, who is only 17 years old and who will also be competing in the DTM Trophy this weekend in parallel with his DTM entry, finished last – and was just over 1.4 seconds behind at the end with a personal best time of 1:27.732, which shows how close the field is on the short Nürburgring circuit. In the second practice session, 26 drivers were within 0.775 seconds.
By the way, the track limits should not play a particularly big role at the Nürburgring: The only corner that is closely monitored for compliance with the track limits is the NGK chicane just before the start-finish. There, at the request of the pilots, a tyre tower was erected on entering the chicane, and on exiting a bollard shows the pilots the limit.
And if the forecast is to be believed, the weather should not be a spoiler even on Saturday. While rain was originally forecast for the first day of the race, the probability is now only 20 per cent according to current weather data. But that can change at any time in the Eifel. The first qualifying session will take place at 10:05 a.m.
