Premat fastest in Norisring practice

The Audi driver spent most of the session towards the top of the times, and he grabbed top spot from Mercedes' Bruno Spengler with just 30 seconds to go.

Spengler improved his time at the end but could not get back ahead of the Frenchman, while behind them Maro Engel's Mercedes made it two older-spec cars in the top three.

Despite Spengler and Engel being in contention at the front, there were more Audis at the sharp end than Mercedes.

Timo Scheider, Oliver Jarvis and Martin Tomczyk completed the top six in their 2009-spec Audis. Jamie Green, winner here for the past two years, was next up, before Mattias Ekstrom in the fourth Abt-run Audi.

Gary Paffett and Ralf Schumacher made sure that there were a couple more Mercedes in the top 10, and just behind them Susie Stoddart edged David Coulthard, who had been one of the pace-setters early on.

Pos Driver                Car           Time     Gap    Laps
 1. Alexandre Premat      Audi          48.289s           48
 2. Bruno Spengler        Mercedes      48.393s  +0.104   43
 3. Maro Engel            Mercedes      48.491s  +0.202   43
 4. Timo Scheider         Audi          48.517s  +0.228   43
 5. Oliver Jarvis         Audi          48.543s  +0.254   51
 6. Martin Tomczyk        Audi          48.550s  +0.261   47
 7. Jamie Green           Mercedes      48.566s  +0.277   46
 8. Mattias Ekstrom       Audi          48.611s  +0.322   43
 9. Gary Paffett          Mercedes      48.646s  +0.357   48
10. Ralf Schumacher       Mercedes      48.660s  +0.371   47
11. Susie Stoddart        Mercedes      48.669s  +0.380   51
12. David Coulthard       Mercedes      48.703s  +0.414   42
13. Paul di Resta         Mercedes      48.722s  +0.433   39
14. Mike Rockenfeller     Audi          48.756s  +0.467   41
15. Franky Cheng          Mercedes      48.877s  +0.588   52
16. Katherine Legge       Audi          48.905s  +0.616   49
17. Miguel Molina         Audi          48.972s  +0.683   50
18. Markus Winkelhock     Audi          49.019s  +0.730   24