Preining Beats Out Rast in Opening Norisring Practice

Thomas Preining set the pace in the opening DTM practice session at Norisring, beating out Rene Rast with a late flyer.

Preining reeled off a lap of 49.872 behind the wheel of his No. 24 KUS Team Bernhard Porsche 911 GT3 R with a minute remaining on the clock in the 45-minute session.

In doing so, the Austrian toppled the No. 33 Abt Sportsline Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Rene Rast, which had climbed to the top spot some six minutes earlier.

Rast ended the session in second place, just 0.084 seconds down on Preining’s Porsche.

Dennis Olsen finished third after leading the session with ten minutes to go, before dropping down thanks to improvements from Preining and Rast.

Porsche looked strong throughout the session, with the two SSR Performance cars of Olsen and Laurens Vanthoor running one-two early on. 

The best efforts from all three drivers came after the session was briefly halted by a full course yellow, prompted when a piece of trackside advertising came loose from the fence and had to be recovered.

The session started with the track still damp from an earlier rain shower, but lap times improved as the track dried out.

Ayhancan Guven, who is making his DTM debut this weekend as a substitute for Nick Cassidy, finished fourth aboard the No. 37 AlphaTauri AF Corse Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020.

Guven led Nico Mueller, Luca Stolz, Arjun Maini and Kelvin van der Linde.

The top ten was rounded out by championship leader Sheldon van der Linde, with Franck Perera eleventh in his first session as a DTM driver.

Track action continues with the second free practice session at 3:40 p.m. local time (9:30 a.m. ET)

RESULTS: Practice 1