Brno: Scheider top on Friday morning

Opel opens with first place, six Audi drivers in top 10

Opel and Audi were impressive at the DTM's first appearance in Brno in the Czech Republic. Timo Scheider clocked the fastest lap on Friday morning in his Opel Vectra GTS V8 with a time of 1:54.736 minutes in the first 90-minute-long training session. His team mates Manuel Reuter and Laurent Aiello battled into fifth and eighth place, respectively.

Audi managed to place all six drivers among the top 10. Tom Kristensen was the second-fastest around the 5.403 kilometre-long track, two tenths of a second off the pace. Mattias Ekström, overall leader in the championship standings, came third in his Audi A4 DTM. Martin Tomczyk in sixth, Christian Abt and Frank Biela in ninth and 10th underlined Audi's strong team performance. Mattias Ekström's toughest rival in the championship, Christijan Albers, was the best AMG-Mercedes C-class driver after coming seventh.

Timo Scheider (Opel):

"I am very satisfied. We immediately found a good balance and only had to improve on a few small things afterwards. I drove my fastest lap at the very beginning. Today we principally worked with a view to qualifying."

Tom Kristensen (Audi):

"I'm pretty satisfied, especially given that the track still had very little grip this morning. But the first training doesn't really mean that much. But for me it can definitely continue on like this."

Christijan Albers (Mercedes-Benz):

"We tried out a few things in the first training this morning. But it's too early to make a forecast for the race in two days' time."

-dtm-