BMW claimed the first fastest time of the DTM weekend at the Norisring. Bruno Spengler completed his fastest lap of the 2.3 kilometres long street circuit in Nuremberg in 47.971 seconds and thus was 0.077 seconds faster than Mattias Ekström with his Audi RS 5 DTM. With Tom Blomqvist and Timo Glock, third and fourth place were also in the hands of the Munich-based brand.

“The weather was good, so was my Audi. There isn’t much to report,” was Ekström’s brief comment. “We did some fine tuning for tomorrow, because that is when it matters.”

A lap in the city at an average speed of 172.6 km/h – things are a little bit different at the only street circuit on the DTM calendar. Because of the short track, the times of the DTM drivers are even more closely matched than at a Grand Prix circuit. All 18 drivers posted lap times within 0.842 seconds. That is promising for the two races, the seventh race of the season on Sunday at 13.28 hrs and the eighth one day later at 17.23 hrs.

Behind Swiss driver Nico Müller in fifth place, Gary Paffett was the best driver with a Mercedes-AMG C 63 DTM in sixth place. His fellow Mercedes driver Robert Wickens was seventh at the end of the 30 minutes’ session. Augusto Farfus, Maxime Martin (both BMW) and Mike Rockenfeller (Audi) rounded out the top ten.