Tom Kristensen also wide awake in warm-up

Tom Kristensen also wide awake in warm-up
His home track, as Tom Kristensen is jokingly calling the Motorsport Arena Oschersleben, seems to suit the Dane: in warm-up on Sunday morning, the pole-sitter for the third season round also set the fastest lap. With the Siemens Audi A4, he lapped the 3.667 kilometres long track in 1.21.725 minutes. The second fastest lap on Sunday morning was set by Bernd Schneider with the Vodafone AMG Mercedes C-Class, 0.078 seconds down on Kristensen. The top three was completed by Jamie Green, the second-placed driver from qualifying.

Already in fourth place was the best-placed driver with year-old machinery: with the Easy Rent AMG Mercedes C-Class, Alexandros Margaritis was fourth fastest with a lap time of 1.21.898 minutes. Mattias Ekström, who had bad luck in qualifying and is ninth on the starting grid, ended the 30 minutes’ warm-up session in fifth place ahead of Mika Häkkinen. Timo Scheider, Martin Tomczyk, Pierre Kaffer and Christian Abt completed the top ten. Bruno Spengler was eleventh, while Heinz-Harald Frentzen occupied 15th position.

In dry conditions, Susie Stoddart became the best-placed driver with a car from 2004 in 17th place. With the AutoScout24 AMG Mercedes C-Class, the young lady racer from Scotland outpaced her direct opponents Mathias Lauda (Junge Gebrauchte AMG Mercedes C-Class), Vanina Ickx (Orig. Zubehör Audi A4) and Olivier Tielemans (Futurecom Audi A4). Stoddart was less than two tenths of a second down on Stefan Mücke, who ranked 16th with his 2005-spec TV-Spielfilm AMG Mercedes C-Class.

Even though warm-up is only a final check before the race, the close competition in the field makes us expect a highly exciting third round. Up to Frank Stippler in 13th place, all drivers were within one second. Stippler, born in Cologne and living in Bad Münstereifel, set a lap time of 1.22.560 minutes with his S line Audi A4, 0.835 seconds slower than his fellow Audi-driver Kristensen in front.

The ARD is broadcasting the race from the Motorsport Arena Oschersleben live from 13.45 h.