Spengler quickest in Mugello practice

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