Ekstrom tops Hockenheim practice

The Audi driver set his time in the early stages of the two and a half hour session, while the majority of the quick laps from other drivers came in the closing seconds.

Behind the two-time champion was Tom Kristensen, who announced earlier this weekend that he is starting his final DTM season. The Dane was up on Ekstrom's time after the first two sectors of his best lap, but lost time to the Swede in the stadium section, along with most of the other frontrunners.

Martin Tomczyk completed an Audi lockout of the top three places, while Gary Paffett was the top Mercedes, moving up to fourth with his final lap after spending most of the session towards the bottom of the times.

Practice was interrupted by two red flags, one of which was around 20 minutes after a rumble strip on the outside of Turn 1 came loose and damaged the floors of several cars.

The second came after series rookie Tomas Kostka crashed at the same corner, and that stoppage led to a flurry of activity at the end as the session restarted with just seven minutes remaining.

Most drivers improved during that time as they prepared for the afternoon's qualifying session, but Ekstrom had no need to better his time.

Behind Paffett was the Mercedes of Paul di Resta, while Oliver Jarvis was first of the 2008 cars in sixth place just ahead of Audi team-mate Mike Rockenfeller.

Jamie Green was the best of the one-year-old Mercedes in eighth. The former race winner was second to Ekstrom for most of the session, but he only completed eight laps early on and didn't go out when everyone else went quicker.

Pos Driver               Car         Time          Gap
 1. Mattias Ekstrom      Audi        1m32.740s
 2. Tom Kristensen       Audi        1m32.929s  +0.189
 3. Martin Tomczyk       Audi        1m33.114s  +0.374
 4. Gary Paffett         Mercedes    1m33.162s  +0.422
 5. Paul di Resta        Mercedes    1m33.188s  +0.448
 6. Oliver Jarvis        Audi        1m33.213s  +0.473
 7. Mike Rockenfeller    Audi        1m33.369s  +0.629
 8. Jamie Green          Mercedes    1m33.403s  +0.663
 9. Alexandre Premat     Audi        1m33.421s  +0.681
10. Katherine Legge      Audi        1m33.541s  +0.801
11. Timo Scheider        Audi        1m33.600s  +0.860
12. Maro Engel           Mercedes    1m33.743s  +1.003
13. Markus Winkelhock    Audi        1m33.839s  +1.099
14. Bruno Spengler       Mercedes    1m33.924s  +1.184
15. Mathias Lauda        Mercedes    1m34.004s  +1.264
16. Susie Stoddart       Mercedes    1m34.087s  +1.347
17. Ralf Schumacher      Mercedes    1m34.173s  +1.433
18. Christian Bakkerud   Audi        1m34.330s  +1.590
19. Tomas Kostka         Audi        1m35.098s  +2.358
20. Johannes Seidlitz    Audi        1m35.152s  +2.412