Spengler quickest in Mugello practice
| By Glenn Freeman |
Saturday, May 3rd 2008, 09:30 GMT |
Bruno Spengler topped a session at a DTM weekend for the first time this season on Saturday morning at Mugello.
The Mercedes driver, who has finished runner-up in the standings for the past two seasons, edged Friday pacesetter Mattias Ekstrom by two tenths of a second with a lap set during the middle of the session.
Saturday practice usually features a mad rush at the end as teams fine tune their qualifying setups, but despite 18 of the 19 cars coming into the pits together and doing one final run with five minutes to go, very few drivers were able to improve their times.
The times throughout the session were remarkably faster than those set yesterday though, with 16 drivers going faster than Ekstrom was able to on Friday.
Championship leader Timo Scheider was third quickest for Audi, while Jamie Green, who had a low-speed spin at the first corner, was fourth.
Tom Kristensen completed the top five, while Mike Rockenfeller was the top driver in a one-year-old car. Markus Winkelhock and Oliver Jarvis were next up, also driving the 2007-spec Audi that had a clear speed advantage at the Italian track last year.
Pos Driver Team Time Gap
1. Bruno Spengler Mercedes 1:42.425
2. Mattias Ekstrom Audi 1:42.691 +0.266
3. Timo Scheider Audi 1:42.899 +0.474
4. Jamie Green Mercedes 1:42.976 +0.551
5. Tom Kristensen Audi 1:43.112 +0.687
6. Mike Rockenfeller Audi 1:43.267 +0.842
7. Markus Winkelhock Audi 1:43.331 +0.906
8. Oliver Jarvis Audi 1:43.356 +0.931
9. Bernd Schneider Mercedes 1:43.359 +0.934
10. Paul di Resta Mercedes 1:43.445 +1.020
11. Martin Tomczyk Audi 1:43.602 +1.177
12. Alexandre Premat Audi 1:44.086 +1.661
13. Gary Paffett Mercedes 1:44.212 +1.787
14. Ralf Schumacher Mercedes 1:44.289 +1.864
15. Christijan Albers Audi 1:44.349 +1.924
16. Maro Engel Mercedes 1:44.596 +2.171
17. Katherine Legge Audi 1:44.959 +2.534
18. Mathias Lauda Mercedes 1:45.018 +2.593
19. Susie Stoddart Mercedes 1:45.438 +3.013
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