Jusuf Owega starts strongly at the Alpine rollercoaster

• Mercedes-AMG driver sets Friday’s fastest practice time at the Red Bull Ring
• Good start for the Schubert Motorsport BMWs in second and third place
• Championship leader Mirko Bortolotti continues his fine form with fifth place in the Lamborghini

Spielberg. Jusuf Owega (Cologne) has made a strong start to the penultimate round of this season’s DTM at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. The Mercedes-AMG driver clocked the fastest lap of 1:28.345 in the first free practice session on Friday morning – a time that remained unbeaten after FP2. “It feels good to be fastest in practice, and shows that you are going to be there or thereabouts. The circuit here in the mountains is very beautiful and we want to get a good result,” said the 21-year-old from Mercedes-AMG Team BWT. He was followed by the two BMW of Schubert Motorsport, which dominated the second session and showed that they will be a force to be reckoned with at the Formula 1 circuit in Spielberg. Sheldon van der Linde (ZA) won the afternoon session, but was 0.077 seconds slower than Owega’s fastest lap time. “It is nice to start the weekend so well, even though we don’t know how strong the opposition really is. It is relatively easy to overtake and to gain places during the race at the Red Bull Ring. We need a successful weekend, in order to get back in the thick of the title race,” said the defending DTM champion.

0.049 seconds behind his team-mate was René Rast (Bregenz) in third place. Arjun Maini (IND) from Mercedes-AMG Team HRT also impressed with fourth place in the first show of strength at what is the fastest track on the DTM calendar. Behind him, championship leader Mirko Bortolotti (I) backed up his fine form, ending the day fifth fastest in his Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2.

The field of 28 cars took to the track at 10:35 on Friday for the first free practice at the 4.318-kilometre Alpine circuit. With temperatures around 18 degrees Celsius, it took until the final third of the session for the drivers to really put pedal to the metal. Owega set the fastest time of the day on his 18th lap, with two minutes remaining. It was a little warmer for FP2 in the afternoon, but there were a few drops of rain intermittently. With this in mind, a number of teams did not necessarily go for fast lap times, but instead opted to test various set-ups. That was not the case with Schubert Motorsport: Rast clocked his fastest time on his 14th lap, before Sheldon van der Linde went even faster just five seconds later and ended the second practice session at the top of the timing sheet.

Saturday’s qualifying begins at 08:55. The battle for grid positions will be streamed live at ran.de. TV partner ProSieben is showing all 16 of this season’s races live on free-to-air TV. The DTM is broadcast live or replayed in full in more than 150 territories around the world.