Mattias Ekström (Audi Sport Team Abt / Audi A4 DTM #5)
1st / 1st place, 1m 24.466s (67 laps)
“So far, everything has been running exactly according to plan. Irrespective
of my two best times, which have to be taken with a grain of salt,
considering it’s only Friday, we have diligently worked our way down our
whole to-do list. Tomorrow, it’ll be all about turning today’s exploit into a
place on the first row of the grid.“
Christian Abt (Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline / Audi A4 DTM #11)
7th / 6th place, 1m 25.129s (59 laps)
“I’m quite satisfied with my places today, but Mattias is clearly quicker –
particularly across the long run. I still need to explore why that is and
continue to work on the setup.“
Emanuele Pirro (Audi Sport Infineon Team Joest / Audi A4 DTM #44)
16th / 7th place, 1m 25.252s (77 laps)
“It’s been a good day. We’ve definitely made progress over the past few
weeks and confirmed our trend of moving forwards. The car feels great,
we have a good setup for the qualifying and the race as well.“
Tom Kristensen (Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline / Audi A4 DTM #12)
2nd / 8th place, 1m 25.199s (46 laps)
“The first test went very well, we tried out a lot of different things. In the
second test, my car suddenly lost oil. I immediately shut off the engine to
prevent any subsequent damage. Although this made me lose a lot of time
today, the fact that the engine is okay is a lot more important. I’m convinced
that I’ll be at the very front of the field again tomorrow.“
Frank Biela (Audi Sport Infineon Team Joest / Audi A4 DTM #45)
17th / 10th place, 1m 25.330s (69 laps)
“What we tried today was good. There are still a few minor things left,
though, for us to improve tomorrow morning. This was not at all a bad start
to the weekend. It’ll probably be hard to make it into the top ten in the
qualifying – but of course I’m going to give my level best.“
Martin Tomczyk (Audi Sport Team Abt / Audi A4 DTM #6)
12th / 14th place, 1m 25.570s (47 laps)
“I’m not completely happy yet with the setup of my A4. After all, though,
Friday’s practice serves to give you the chance of trying out different
approaches. We worked intensively for three hours today, so I’m sure that
tomorrow we’ll be ready for the qualifying session and among the front
runners.“
Hans-Jürgen Abt (Team Director Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline)
“The work we did today was clearly focused, and we tried out different
things with our four cars to collect as much data as possible. Mattias was
the quickest in both tests, and his long run was very good, too. This makes
me feel very confident.“
Ralf Jüttner (Technical Director Audi Sport Infineon Team Joest)
“Compliments to the squad who had only a short time to prepare the cars
after our trip to China. Today was very productive, and we consistently
worked in the right direction. Mattias – yet again – is in a class by himself,
but the rest are incredibly close to each other. Nevertheless, we had both
cars make it into the top ten. If we can manage to do that tomorrow as well,
I’ll be happy.“
Dr Wolfgang Ullrich (Head of Audi Motorsport)
“Five cars among the top ten – that’s a very good result. Today, we focused
on working our way through our whole programme. I think we’ll have a very
good setup for tomorrow. It would be nice if tomorrow we could show the
same strength we demonstrated today.“
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