Edoardo Mortara was the fastest in FP1 at the Norisring. Marco Wittmaan was second and Mattias Ekström was only third after dominating the session.
In the beginning of the session, Robert Wickens was the fastest with a 49.373s laptime ahead of Christian Vietoris and Mattias Ekström before Vietoris went faster than Wickens. A few minutes later, Ekström claimed fastest time before a red flag came out on track, apparently for track reasons. After ten minutes of interruption, the session could resume.
After the interruption, BMW cars seemed to be a bit faster as Marco Wittmann snuck in P3 when the best placed BMW was himself in P13 just moments before. Adrien Tambay claimed fastest time halfway through the session with a 49.157 laptime, 0.029s faster than Ekström before the Sweden took back his fastest time. Ekström was the first to dip under 49s with a 48.968s laptime. Antonio Felix Da Costa, struggling since the beginning of the session, managed to get himself in P2. While Ekström pitted, Wittmann and then Edoardo Mortara joined him under the 49s laptime. Despite not being able to overcome Ekström’s time, Müller and Tambay managed to get a time in 48s as well.
Mortara leads the way in free-practice with a 48.878s laptime ahead of Wittmann, best BMW, and Ekström. Müller, Tambay, Wickens -best Mercedes-, Scheider, Blomqvist, Rockenfeller -who had the exact same time than Blomqvist– and Götz complete the top 10. It was a good session for Audi with five cars into the top 10 and as usual on this track, the times were really close as only 0.162 separate Mortara from Götz.