Audi & Porsche Top Two Days Of DTM Testing
The DTM grid has had two days of official pre-season testing at Portimao ahead of this weekend’s opening round of the 20-22 season, the second with GT3 machinery.
Day 1
Audi ahead of Porsche: that was the order at the end of the first DTM test day just before the season opener at Portimão.
Swiss Ricardo Feller ended up fastest in the Team ABT Sportsline Audi R8 with a time of 1:41.573s ahead of Austrian Thomas Preining (1:41.658s) with the Porsche 911 from KÜS Team Bernhard. Marius Zug, the youngest driver in the field at 19, posted the third-fastest time at Portimão on Tuesday with the Attempto Racing Audi, testing taking place in Portugal into dusk with daytime running time-restricted due to the required preparatory works around the facility ahead of the race weekend proper.
“Of course, being fastest is a nice feeling, but I don’t want to be the fastest in testing, I want to do so in quaifying,” DTM rookie Feller said after testing had ended on Tuesday evening. “Anyway, it is mega cool in DTM. Professionalism is extreme, the level is unbelievably high.” Thomas Preining, one of four Austrians in DTM, was also visibly satisfied. “We worked through our programme very well. For today, I am happy with the performance, but we will probably only see where we really are in first qualifying on Saturday,” Preining said. “As expected, everything is super close,” his team principal, former endurance world champion and Le Mans winner Timo Bernhard said.
Four of the six brands competing in this year’s DTM were among the first seven places on the first test day, next to Audi and Porsche also BMW and Lamborghini. The fastest with the new BMW M4 was South African Sheldon van der Linde (Schubert Motorsport, 1: 41.919s) in fifth, the fastest from the six Lamborghini drivers was newcomer Nicki Thiim (T3 Motorsport, 1: 41.940s) in seventh. “The team only picked up the new car in Italy on Thursday, so we first had to run in and adapt the new car a bit,” a cheerful Nicki Thiim, the son of DTM legend and 1986 champion Kurt Thiim reported. “It is a privilege what I am doing here. I really appreciate it. I am living my dream,” the Dane underlined the significance his profession and DTM have for him.
Mercedes-AMG, the most successful brand of the previous year, apparently still kept a low profile at the start of testing. The fastest driver was German Luca Stolz from the HRT team who ended up in 14th place with a time of 1m 42.167s. One place further down was Brazilian Felipe Fraga (1:42.172s) with the Ferrari 488 from the Red Bull AlphaTauri AF Corse team. The driver of the second Ferrari on Tuesday was regular driver Nick Cassidy, who will hand over the car to nine-time rally world champion Sébastien Loeb on Wednesday. The Frenchman will be making his DTM debut this weekend.
Ben Green mixed with the impressive drivers’ field. The 23-year-old Brit had won the title in DTM Trophy, the talent pool on the DTM platform, in the past season. As a reward, Green got to take part in a DTM test. In the Mercedes-AMG of championship-winning team HRT, Green did a good job straight away. “I enjoyed every lap. The HRT team supported me really well to get acquainted with the Mercedes-AMG and the new track. Following a technical issue, we had to stop a bit earlier than planned. Now, I am looking forward to Wednesday when I will be able to attack with new tyres,” Ben Green said. “DTM is my undisputed goal and I think that I am getting a bit closer to that goal here in Portimão.”
Day 2
Norwegian Dennis Olsen ended up as the fastest driver on the second day of the second official DTM test at Portimão. With the Porsche 911 run by the Munich-based SSR Performance team, Olsen completed his fastest lap of the 4.563 kilometres long Formula 1 track on the Algarve coast in 1: 41.378s.
The best-placed Audi driver, Swiss Nico Müller (Team Rosberg) ended up in second place with 1: 41.647s, followed by Nicki Thiim with the Lamborghini Huracán run by T3 Motorsport (1:41.690s).
Nine-time rally world champion Sébastien Loeb prepared for his DTM debut this weekend with 75 laps in the Red Bull AlphaTauri AF Corse Ferrari, only three drivers completed more laps on Wednesday.
In ideal test conditions with temperatures just below 20 degrees, the second and final day of testing prior to the season opener delivered the first interesting encounter.
At the end of the five-hour test that, like on the previous day, only ended as darkness fell at 9pm local time, the lap times of 23 of the 29 drivers were within one second.
As on Tuesday, Luca Stolz from the championship-winning HRT team emerged as the fastest Mercedes-AMG driver, classified eighth with a time of 1m 41.926, immediately followed by South African Sheldon van der Linde (Schubert Motorsport) with the best-placed new BMW M4 (1:41.971s). Brazilian Felipe Fraga ended up in eleventh place with the Red Bull Ferrari (1:42.005s). Two-time DTM champion Marco Wittmann (GER) caused the only interruption of the test with an off-track excursion with his Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M4.
“These were two good days,” 26-year-old Dennis Olsen commented. “At the end of the day, we posted a good lap time and above all, we achieved a good balance in the car. Being on top is always nice, even though it was only a test. Anyway, I am really excited to be in DTM.” With Olsen on Wednesday and Swiss Ricardo Feller (Audi, Team ABT Sportsline), two DTM newcomers were the fastest drivers on the two days. Nico Müller, runner-up in the 2020 DTM, drew a positive conclusion: “I am more satisfied with the second test day than with the previous day because I was able to complete more laps. However, one shouldn’t overinterpret the result as these were just test days and not everybody has put all the cards on the table yet.” In first qualifying on Saturday morning at the latest, drivers and teams will display their full potential.
Nicki Thiim has always dreamt about building on the great career of his father Kurt (champion in 1986, 19 wins and 16 pole positions from 211 races) one day. Now, the 33-year-old, who already was GT endurance world champion as a works driver with Aston Martin twice, has finally arrived in DTM. His joy was obvious for everyone to hear. “This was an incredible day, for me and I think also for my team. Mentally, I am done because of the many laps. Our car is brand new, so we had to rack up a lot of miles to sort out the teething problems,” said an emotional Nicki Thiim, who is driving a Lamborghini Huracán run by the T3 Motorsport team from Dresden. “On Thursday, I have a day off, but the guys still have to work hard, take the car fully apart and rebuild it again.” Similar to his father Kurt Thiim, who was on-site again to watch the test and is always good for a nice quote, Nicki Thiim said when asked about the transition to the Italian sports car: “That is a car and it has four wheels and a steering wheel.”
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