The DTM series heads to Moscow Raceway for round five of the 2014 season. The series made its first appearance at the circuit in 2013 with Mike Rockenfeller taking the victory for Audi. At that time, the series ran a shorter version of the circuit - a 2.555 km (1.588 mi) 10 turn setup but this year will run the longer 3.931 km (2.44 mi) 14 turn layout. In essence, all the teams and drivers are coming to Moscow Raceway with a relatively clean notebook.
There is one driver who will be looking forward to that clean slate - Canada's Robert Wickens, who is coming of a very decisive victory at Norisring just two weeks ago. Of course Wickens, driving the FREE MAN'S WORLD Mercedes AMG C Coupe could also be praying for rain. The win at Norisring, Robert's second career DTM victory and the fist in 2014 for Mercedes AMG, vaulted the young driver up the championship charts going from zero points over the first three races to sitting seventh overall with 25 points (tied with Christian Vietoris, Mercedes AMG). In fact, he is just three points out of fifth and only ten back of third (Audi drivers Ekstrom and Rockenfeller tied on 35 points). Given Audi's dominance so far this season (five of the top six championship spots), Wickens ... and Mercedes will be pulling out all the stops to score back to back victories.
We will also be keeping track of Bruno Spengler (Montreal, QC) in the Team Schnitzer BMW M4. Spengler has scored points in two races so far this season including a podium a third place finish at Hungaroring. Bruno currently sits tenth in the championship just two points back of Wickens.
Following is the on-track schedule for DTM at Moscow Raceway. It looks as though the schedule has been adjusted somewhat to address broadcast rights in Germany. The race circuit is in the MSK time zone which is three hours ahead of the Central European TIme (CET). That makes it nine hours ahead of Eastern Time (ET). We have included the (approximate) conversion (in BOLD) - just hope we got the math right.
RaceCanada will be providing updates for practice sessions and live updates during qualifying (Saturday) and the race (Sunday) via Facebook (www.facebook.com/RaceCanada.ca) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/RaceCanada_ca)
You can follow live timing and scoring for all sessions at http://live.dtm.com/timing/dtm
Track Schedule:
Saturday, 12 July 2014
11:00 - 12:00 hrs. DTM free practice 1 (3:00 - 4:00 AM ET)
14:15 - 15:15 hrs. DTM free practice 2 (5:15 - 6:15 AM ET)
18:40 - 19:30 hrs. DTM qualifying (10:40 - 11:30 AM ET)
Sunday, 13 July 2014
15:30 hrs. DTM green light, start formation lap (7:30 AM ET)
15:33 hrs. DTM start race