KLETTWITZ, Germany — Porsche made a strong start to the second DTM season stop at the Dekra Lausitzring.
The 911s from the Manthey EMA team were unbeatable in free practice on Friday in both dry and wet conditions.
In the first session at midday, Thomas Preining achieved the best time of the day with 1:20.782 minutes and was the only driver to break the 1:21.000 minute mark.
The defending champion showed a clear improvement in performance after the mediocre start to the season in Oschersleben.
“The free practice is not very informative. But after Oschersleben it was important for our team to be among the fastest again. The car ran like it was on rails and it is great to drive such a vehicle on such a technically demanding track with these hard bumps,” explained the 25-year-old.
Maro Engel managed the second fastest lap in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 with a time of 1:21.061 minutes, third place went to Audi driver Kelvin van der Linde.
Vice-champion Mirko Bortolotti finished fourth in the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2, Ayhancan Güven drove the second Porsche 911 GT3 R from Manthey EMA to fifth place. At the start of the second free practice session in the afternoon, heavy rainfall began in parts of the Lausitz.
The drivers used this opportunity to put the Cinturato WHB rain tires from Pirelli, newly developed for this season, to a real endurance test.
After an initial feeling out process, an exciting time hunt developed on the wet 3.478-kilometer track. Güven set the best time on his 20th lap with a time of 1:35.573 minutes. The Porsche driver: “Two years ago, I won my first race in the ADAC GT Masters here at the Lausitzring, also in the rain. As far as I’m concerned, the weather can stay like this over the weekend; these conditions suit me. We were able to make the most of the training session to find out how the new Pirelli rain tires behave in different amounts of water on the track.”
Kelvin van der Linde finished second in the Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo2, a good tenth of a second behind. Jack Aitken, who celebrated his first DTM victory at the Lausitzring last year, finished the rainy session on Friday afternoon in third place in the Ferrari 296 GT3.
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