Loïc Duval had one of his relatively rare moments of success in third free practice of the DTM at Circuit Zandvoort.

The Frenchman, who has yet to score his first championship point in the DTM, drove his Audi RS 5 DTM to a lap time of 1m28.326s and ended up first.

With BMW’s Augusto Farfus (1m28.349s) in second and Mercedes-AMG driver Maro Engel (1m28.495s) in third, all three manufacturers had one driver in the top three.

"Unfortunately, there are no points for first place in free practice." He said

"Of course, qualifying is more important, but we have a good basis. So far, the weekend has been satisfying for me, but it will be difficult against the strong BMWs," the rookie added

Even though the practice result hasn’t too much significance: DTM points’ leader René Rast was classified last in the 30 minutes’ session on Sunday morning, while his main rival Mattias Ekström ended up sixth.

Auer also did better than Rast: the Austrian ended up in eleventh place, 0.475 seconds down on Duval’s time.