Ready for the final sprint in the DTM title race: Preining fastest in practice at the Sachsenring

• Austrian, currently second in the table, starts penultimate DTM weekend with the top time
• Kelvin van der Linde is second fastest in a BMW M4 GT3 Evo
• Championship leader Maro Engel posts fifth-fastest lap in practice

Hohenstein-Ernstthal. Thomas Preining (A/Manthey) is ready and raring to go, as the DTM title race enters the finish straight. The 28-year-old set the fastest lap time of free practice on Friday at the Sachsenring, stopping the clock at 1:18.148 minutes. In doing so, the Austrian underlined his billing as one of the top favourites to taste success in the Porsche 911 GT3 R at the undulating, 3.645-kilometre circuit. "The key at the winding Sachsenring is to find your rhythm. You have to work on that in the practice sessions, and we managed to do precisely that. The track suits me pretty well. We want to push hard and challenge for race wins," said Preining, who trails leader Engel by just one point.

Kelvin van der Linde (ZA/Schubert Motorsport) was second fastest, 0.087 seconds off Preining's pace. Third place went to Ricardo Feller in the second Manthey 911. "This year has gone incredibly quickly. All of a sudden, the season is almost over. For this reason, I really want to make it onto the podium this weekend - and we are well prepared to do just that," said the Swiss racer, who set the fastest time of 1:18.857 minutes in the slower second session. The best-placed Mercedes-AMG driver was Jules Gounon (F/Mercedes-AMG Team Mann-Filter) in fourth. Championship leader Maro Engel (Monaco/Mercedes-AMG Team Ravenol) completed the top five and was happy with his own programme, without reading too much into the practice times. "We tried out different configurations. The car feels good. We are not looking at the opposition, but are focussing solely on ourselves," said the DTM leader.

Preining moved to the top of the timings sheet early in Free Practice 1, but was briefly bettered by Engel and Gounon, before reclaiming top spot with two minutes remaining. Shortly after that, van der Linde and Feller climbed into second and third place respectively. In the afternoon session, the focus was less on lap times, and more on finding the right race set-up: the teams fine-tuned the balance of their cars and simulated long runs for races 13 and 14 of the season on Saturday and Sunday.

The first qualifying session at the Sachsenring begins at 09:55. Fans can follow the race against the clock via a livestream at ran.de. ProSieben is showing all 16 of this season's races live on free-to-air TV, with coverage beginning at 13:00 on Saturday and Sunday. The two races will also be streamed free of charge on Joyn, ServusTV ON, and the YouTube channel @DTM.

All the results from the Sachsenring can be found at dtm.com/en/results.