A matter of thousandths: Scheider and Schneider with equal times

Audi A4 on the main straight at EuroSpeedway.

It couldn’t have been any closer: in the second DTM test on Friday, Timo Scheider and Bernd Schneider occupied first and second place with equal times. For both drivers, the stopwatch showed an identical fastest lap time of 1.19.688 on their fastest lap at the 3.478 kilometers long track in the Lausitz region. Scheider was first from Schneider, because he achieved his fastest lap time earlier than the DTM record champion, Schneider closed up.

For the drivers who followed the leading duo, it was also a close call: in the second test, the first 13 drivers ranged within one second. Only Susie Stoddart in 14th place was over one second slower than the front runners. After Katherine Legge had outpaced the Scottish lady racer, Stoddart did one better in the second 90 minutes’ test and eventually was more than four tenths of a second faster than Legge.

Bruno Spengler, who ended up third in the test, came 0.113 seconds short of the time set by Scheider and Schneider. Spengler was followed by two further drivers from the HWA team: Paul di Resta in fourth place and Jamie Green in fifth position. Martin Tomczyk, Tom Kristensen and Mattias Ekström occupied sixth through eighth place from Markus Winkelhock with the best-placed year-old car. Gary Paffett was tenth.

The first 20 minutes saw little action at the circuit. Just before the start of the session, a slight drizzle had set in and the Audi drivers remained in the pits at first, while their opponents from Mercedes-Benz completed their first laps. The most productive driver on Friday afternoon was Jamie Green, who drove the highest number of laps, namely 51. Di Resta (50 laps) and Bernd Schneider (49) also drove long-runs in preparation for the 48 lap race on Sunday.

Yellow flags were out for almost five minutes after Audi driver Markus Winkelhock had spun into the gravel trap at turn 10 and wasn’t able to get going again by his own means. Only after the Swabian was pulled out with the recovery vehicle, he could make his way back to the pits.