N'Ring, free practice one: Alzen quickest

Alzen went fastest at the official Nurburgring test on July 20 and 21 and continued today where he left off, with a time 0.1s faster than second-placed man Pedro Lamy.

Team Rosberg driver Lamy was the first of the Mercedes and took second place with a flying lap at the end of the session as the dry line began to emerge. The Portuguese driver was closely followed by the AMG-run hotshoe Marcel Fassler in third place.

The slippery conditions made for an incident-packed session. Nearly all the frontrunners had moments, with seventh-quickest Manuel Reuter taking a trip through the gravel at the Castrol-S chicane and Klaus Ludwig spinning his AMG Mercedes while accelerating out of the Veedol chicane.

Even fastest man Alzen was caught out as he experimented with braking distances and went straight on, also at the Veedol chicane.

The Opels of Eric Helary and Christian Menzel were fourth and fifth, with Menzel only 0.02s behind the Frenchman. Peter Dumbreck had a moment with an opposite-lock slide onto the pit straight towards the end of the session, but managed to move up to sixth in the dying moments. Mercedes and Opel finished the session with three cars each in the top six.

BTCC ace James Thompson made his return to the Team Abt Audi TT-R after missing the Norisring and Sachsenring rounds. The Yorkshireman finished the session in 18th place, third quickest of the quartet of TTs.


Uwe Alzen Opel V8 Coupe 1m53.080s
Pedro Lamy Mercedes-Benz CLK 1m53.259s
Marcel Fassler Mercedes-Benz CLK 1m53.697s
Eric Helary Opel V8 Coupe 1m53.870s
Christian Menzel Opel V8 Coupe 1m54.093s
Peter Dumbreck Mercedes-Benz CLK 1m54.131s
Manuelk Reuter Opel V8 Coupe 1m54.216s
Marcel Tiemann Mercedes-Benz CLK 1m54.220s
Klaus Ludwig Mercedes-Benz CLK 1m54.244s
Bernd Schneider Opel V8 Coupe 1m54.283s