Gary Paffett the quickest on day two testing in Barcelona
The second day of the four day test on the 2.977 Circuit de Catalunya a Mercedes driver again on the top of the timesheets.
Photo by: DTM
On the second of the four days of testing in Spain, Gary Paffett set the fastest lap time. With his DTM Mercedes AMG C-Coupé, the Briton crossed the line of Barcelona’s 2.977 Circuit de Catalunya in 1:06.149 minutes. With this time, he was just 0.026 seconds faster than Augusto Farfus who took his BMW M3 DTM to second position on the time sheets. The top three were completed by DTM rookie Timo Glock. The gap between Paffett and the German amounted to 66 hundredths of a second.
Behind Robert Wickens, Daniel Juncadella (both Mercedes-Benz) and Martin Tomczyk (BMW), Timo Scheider took the fastest Audi RS 5 DTM to seventh position, followed by his fellow Audi drivers Miguel Molina and Mattias Ekström as well as DTM test driver Maxime Martin (BMW). The busiest man of the day was Farfus. The Brazilian completed 198 laps, representing a total mileage of 589.446 kilometres.
The official ITR tests at Barcelona will be continued on Thursday. Then, once again 11 Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz drivers will gout out on the track to prepare for the coming DTM season.
Miguel Molina, Audi: “Being back in the car after the long and hard winter feels just great. From my point of view, today was a very successful day. It wasn’t our goal to set fast lap times but to fully complete our scheduled testing programme. We succeeded in doing so and gathered loads of findings and data that are helpful for our season preparations. For me, every lap here at Barcelona is something very special. Here, I made my first steps on the motor-racing ladder in a single-seater and whenever I come back I’m proud of doing so as professional racing driver. And even more so with this car: I think my Audi RS 5 is just gorgeous. With this colour, identifying me in the DTM field always will be easy. Now we will do everything to make sure that it does not only look good but also drives even faster.”
Timo Glock, BMW: “I felt more comfortable than on Tuesday, today. We were able to complete a lot of laps and quite obviously, this was helpful for us as a new team and me as DTM rookie. I still have got my problems when it comes to understanding the standard tyre. Nonetheless, I was rather unhappy with our long-runs. And on the option tyres I had particularly big fun, today. We will continue our work at Hockenheim and try to make the best possible use of the short preparation time prior to the season.”
Gary Paffett, Mercedes-Benz: “Apart from the rain in the morning we had another successful day of testing, at Barcelona. We focused on long-runs with the option and the standard tyres, today, to understand the balance and performance differences. It’s nice to hold the top position on the time sheets, at the end of a day of testing but in the end, this doesn’t count.”
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