Lausitz: Friday 2nd practice report

Champion Schneider stakes his claim with day's fastest time

The 39-year-old record DTM champion Bernd Schneider captured the fastest time of the day with 1:39.474 minutes at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz on Friday afternoon. Briton Peter Dumbreck came second in an Opel Vectra GTS V8 in a time of 1:39.499 minutes in the day's second foray around the 4.534 kilometre-long Grand Prix circuit. With this result he managed to match last year's good performance by Opel at Lausitz.

Gary Paffett (1:39.620 minutes), winner of the season-opener, came third in an AMG-Mercedes C-class. Opel drivers Laurent Aiello and Timo Scheider came fourth and fifth, respectively. The best Audi driver among the top 10 was Mattias Ekström in seventh (1:40.026 minutes). The Swede had led the field in this morning's free practice.

The tough competition within the DTM was again clearly evident. A total of 14 cars were separated by a mere 0.9 seconds. Spectacular action on the EuroSpeedway Lausitz is above all ensured by the slightly sloping (five degrees) turn into the finish and the mammoth main grandstand.

Bernd Schneider (Mercedes-Benz):

"The second free practice went very well. At first we did long runs in order to find a decent racing set-up. That worked. Then we simulated the qualifying set-up and were also very satisfied with that. We hope we're as successful tomorrow as well."

Peter Dumbreck (Opel):

"We already pulled off a good performance this morning and confirmed that this afternoon. This track suits our car. This makes me very confident, although the fight for start places only begins tomorrow."

Mattias Ekström (Audi):

"It's going to be a tough weekend. The competition is fast. The top is made up of a combination of Audi, Opel and Mercedes. We worked out the best set-up for the race today and tomorrow morning we're going to work further on the qualifying set-up."

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