Marco Wittmann sets fastest time in Brands Hatch practice
BMW rookie Marco Wittmann has set the fastest time in practice for tomorrow’s DTM race at Brands Hatch, ahead of the Audis of Mike Rockenfeller and Timo Scheider.
The MTEK driver made his intentions clear some 20 minutes into the session, when he took the quickest time from stablemate Dirk Werner. Augusto Farfus also underlined BMW’s pace with the fastest time earlier in the session.
As track temperatures increased, the closing stages of the 90 minutes saw both Scheider and Rockenfeller jump to the top of the timing screens, but were eventually outpaced by Wittmann, who once again went fastest with a time of 41.378 seconds.
Reigning champion, Bruno Spengler, finished fourth ahead of Miguel Molina’s Audi in fifth, with just two-tenths of a second covering the top five drivers. Augusto Farfus ended up in sixth ahead of Joey Hand and Martin Tomczyk, who was quickest at around the half-way mark.
Whilst five BMWs finished in the top-10, Mercedes experienced a difficult afternoon with Gary Paffett finishing ninth as the best of the Stuttgart cars. Audi’s Jamie Green had a similarly difficult session in front of his home crowd and finished 12th.
Notable incidents included Gary Paffett, Filipe Albuquerque and Pascal Wehrlein getting two wheels into the gravel on the exit of Paddock, whilst Dirk Werner bounced across the grass at Surtees after a mistake.
Augusto Farfus was another driver who didn’t have an entirely clean session, with the BMW driver almost causing an accident after slowing to let stablemate Andy Priaulx past. As a result, the following Audi of Adrien Tambay had to take to the grass to avoid hitting the Brazilian.
