Abt puts first miles on new TT-R

Christian Abt put the first miles on the car at Portugal's Estoril circuit, where he was joined by his new team-mate, Karl Wendlinger. The team is already well ahead of where it was last year, when the 2001 car only broke cover at the series' launch day at Hockenheim.

"The first impressions are very good," said Abt, the 1999 German STW Cup champion. "But before the first race gets underway there is still a great deal of work ahead of us to form a winning car from this good basis."

Wendlinger, who had already completed more than 500 kilometres in a 2001 Abt Audi TT-R, was also upbeat about the new car.

"I thoroughly enjoyed these three days," he said. "I quickly became familiar with the TT-R, and then tried to use as much of the possible 100 percent, and squeeze out those last tenths of seconds."

The remainder of Abt's line-up for this season is Laurent Aiello, Mattias Ekstrom and Martin Tomczyk.