Mattias Ekstrom heads DTM practice at Norisring

The Swede was set to end Friday's practice in second place after a couple of attempts in the final minutes had fallen short of the time set by his Abt Audi team-mate Oliver Jarvis.

However, Ekstrom just managed to squeeze one more lap in as the chequered flag came out, and it was enough to jump the Briton by just 0.015 seconds.

Jarvis appeared to have first place all wrapped up after a frantic final 20 minutes of dry running in a session that had started off with a very wet track owing to heavy rain in the morning.

Audis had set the pace in the wet running, particularly the 2008-spec cars of Filipe Albuquerque and championship leader Martin Tomczyk.

Conditions improved throughout though, and there was a lull in the middle of the 90-minute session as the sun came out and teams waited for a full dry line to appear.

Mercedes sent all four of its frontrunning HWA cars out as soon as it deemed the track was fit for some dry running, but the C-class machines were soon overhauled once the Audis joined the fray a few minutes later.

Shortly before Ekstrom's best lap, the 2008-spec Mercedes of Maro Engel appeared set to knock Jarvis off the top of the pile. However, the German's lap fell away in the third sector, and he had to settle for the honour of top Mercedes.

Christian Vietoris was next up in another older C-class, while Bruno Spengler was the top HWA driver in fifth, ahead of Susie Stoddart, Gary Paffett and Tomczyk.

Three-time Norisring winner Jamie Green was only 12th, while last year's pole-sitter Ralf Schumacher brought up the rear of the field after he didn't complete many laps when the track was at its fastest.

Pos  Driver            Car          Time             Laps
 1.  Mattias Ekström   Audi         48.867             41
 2.  Oliver Jarvis     Audi         48.882  + 0.015    43
 3.  Maro Engel        Mercedes     48.974  + 0.107    44
 4.  C.Vietoris        Mercedes     49.001  + 0.134    44
 5.  Bruno Spengler    Mercedes     49.019  + 0.152    47
 6.  Susie Stoddart    Mercedes     49.067  + 0.200    47
 7.  Gary Paffett      Mercedes     49.131  + 0.264    42
 8.  Martin Tomczyk    Audi         49.162  + 0.295    50
 9.  R.van der Zande   Mercedes     49.174  + 0.307    55
10.  Timo Scheider     Audi         49.189  + 0.322    39
11.  M.Rockenfeller    Audi         49.201  + 0.334    45
12.  Jamie Green       Mercedes     49.295  + 0.428    44
13.  Miguel Molina     Audi         49.389  + 0.522    54
14.  David Coulthard   Mercedes     49.397  + 0.530    43
15.  Edoardo Mortara   Audi         49.408  + 0.541    33
16.  F.Albuquerque     Audi         49.466  + 0.599    41
17.  Rahel Frey        Audi         50.428  + 1.561    43
18.  Ralf Schumacher   Mercedes     50.872  + 2.005    30