Donington free practice

by Mark Gedhill - Motorsport.com

Audi dominated free practice at Donington Park with Rinaldo Capello and Tom Kristensen heading the times for most of the session. The pair continued their form from testing and looked extremely fast and confident around the circuit. Chrysler kept up the pressure and Yannick Dalmas and Olivier Beretta stayed about 0.3 seconds behind for most of the session before eventually dropping down to fourth.

As Capello/Kristensen slowly improved the sister car, driven by Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro, climbed up to second place just 0.166 seconds behind. The lead Audi responded with a stunning lap to pull out a lead of over one second, which Johansson/Smith soon reduced by a couple of tenths.

Towards the end of the session the drivers backed off to concentrate on completing runs of laps, with the Audi's lapping some five seconds slower than their fastest times. This slow running caused a few problems as other drivers tried to set fast laps. However as David Brabham and Jan Magnussen in the Panoz closed up, the Audi's all responded and were comfortably faster than anyone else on track.

Overnight rain washed away a lot of the grip and, although conditions were dry and sunny, several drivers spun around the circuit including Patrick Lemarie who ran into the gravel and failed to set a timed lap.

Fastest times:
1 Capello/Kristensen (Audi) 1:21.0044
2 Johansson/Smith (Audi) 1:22.028
3 Biela/Pirro (Audi) 1:22.231
4 Dalmas/Beretta (Chrysler) 1:23.343
5 Bourdais/Bouillon (Courage) 1:23.842

Qualifying will take place between 1530 and 1650 BST (1430 and 1550 GMT).