A surprising result from Friday practice at the Norisring: Ben Dorr secured the fastest time of the day in his Dorr-McLaren under sunny skies and 24-degree temperatures, clocking a 48.793 – leaving him 0.326 seconds shy of Jordan Pepper’s qualifying lap record from last year.
Dorr’s teammate Timo Glock (+0.374) finished in P14, outside the top group. The competition from Mercedes-AMG followed in second and third: Landgraf driver Lucas Auer finished 0.151 seconds behind in P2, while Winward’s Jules Gounon was 0.175 seconds off the pace in third.
A mishap occurred for the Austrian at the end of the first session: The Landgraf crew practiced a pit stop and released Auer with the front-right wheel not properly attached.
Landgraf prevents incident and receives fine
A crash was avoided because the man currently second in the DTM standings was warned via radio – and he stopped the car at the end of the pit lane. Nevertheless, the team was slapped with a 500-Euro fine.
Auer’s Mercedes on the way back to the garage.
Credit: ADAC Motorsport
Fourth place went to Comtoyou Aston Martin driver Nicki Thiim (+0.185), followed by Emil Frey Ferrari’s Thierry Vermeulen in fifth (+0.191). Mirko Bortolotti (Grasser Lamborghini) took sixth (+0.252), while Winward Mercedes driver Maro Engel (+0.263) finished seventh after having led the way in the first session with a 49.202. This meant six different brands were represented in the top eight.
“Brakes overheating”: Several manufacturers at the limit
DTM leader Matteo Cairoli, who is making only his second appearance at the Norisring after a Porsche Carrera Cup outing in 2014, had a difficult start to the weekend in ninth, 0.299 seconds off the lead.
“I have the feeling that the track in sector three is a bit narrower than it was eleven years ago,” the Italian Emil Frey Ferrari driver noted. “You need to brake as late as possible without overshooting the braking point.” For him, too, the brakes on the short 2.162-kilometer street circuit are the deciding factor.
“That is probably my biggest lack at the moment,” he says. “We are currently working on different solutions – different brands of brakes and different materials. Here it is the key. We have the issue that we are overheating the brakes and we lose performance at one point. We need to be careful because it might be possible that you don’t stop the car on time.”
Trouble for BMW and Porsche?
Cairoli is by no means the only one suffering from overheating brakes: The Lamborghini drivers even complained about overheating brakes with the new Temerario during their qualifying simulations, which suggests a difficult race ahead, especially given the current high temperatures. At least for the Grasser team, the basic set-up with the new Temerario, which is making its Norisring debut, seems to be in the ballpark.
Ford, BMW, and Porsche found themselves outside the top positions. While Arjun Maini managed a respectable P12 (+0.313) – with the Mustang GT3 Evo struggling more with the heat during long runs – BMW and Porsche are lagging far behind. The best driver in a BMW M4 GT3 Evo was Kelvin van der Linde, who could manage no better than P16, 0.454 seconds back.
Things went even worse for the Porsche teams Manthey and Land: Thomas Preining (+0.511) and Ricardo Feller (+0.600) finished in P18 and P19, with Bastian Buus taking P20 in the Land-Porsche, 0.645 seconds down. Only local hero Marco Wittmann (+0.881) was slower in the Schubert-BMW.
Weak Porsche top speeds despite large restrictor
The weak top speeds for Porsche are particularly interesting: Although the 911 GT3 Evo was equipped with the large 43-millimeter restrictor, the car sits at the bottom of the rankings at 246.88 km/h. The Emil Frey Ferrari, which led this category, was 10.01 km/h faster through the speed trap.
This could be due to the fact that the small Porsche engine is already operating at its limit, meaning not much additional power is available despite the large restrictor. Furthermore, the Porsche is 30 kilograms heavier than last year, which has a negative impact in the corners.
And even the BMW, which usually generates its speed on the straights, failed to make an impact in the top speed charts: Wittmann reached 250.9 km/h, good for eleventh place – and a deficit of about six km/h to the Emil Frey Ferrari. Things get serious on Saturday with the first qualifying session.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com
