BMW’s Martin Tomczyk took pole position in qualifying for the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters at Brands Hatch, securing the first DTM pole position for BMW Team RMG in the process.
Click here for the full qualifying results.
Update: Underweight Tomczyk loses pole
Tomczyk’s first pole in a BMW also marks the first for BMW Team RMG, who joined the German series at the start of 2012 for the Munich marque’s return to the series. Tomczyk beat Audi’s Mike Rockenfeller by just 0.035 seconds to take his first pole since the Red Bull Ring in 2011 and the ninth of his DTM career.
Starting on the second row of the grid will be Hockenheim winner Augusto Farfus and Joey Hand, as BMW secured three positions in the top four. Hand’s qualifying was the best of his career to-date, with the North American having scored two fifth-place starts in 2012.
Reigning champion Bruno Spengler just missed out on Q4 by 0.007 seconds and will start from fifth, ahead of Audi’s Timo Scheider.
BMW’s Marco Wittmann and Andy Priaulx will start from row four, whilst Audi’s Edoardo Mortara and Miguel Molina will start ninth and tenth, making it six BMW’s and four Audi’s in the top ten.
Former Formula 1 driver Timo Glock improved on his début performance at the Hockenheimring by placing his BMW in 11th.
For Mercedes-Benz, qualifying turned out ot be a disaster in the UK. Gary Paffet could only qualify down in 12th as the top Mercedes pilot, meaning that none of the marque’s cars made it into Q3 for only the second time since the DTM adopted a multi-stage qualifying format.
Mattias Ekström could only qualify his Audi down in 13th – the Swede’s worst qualifying performance since the Red Bull Ring in 2011.
Brit Jamie Green failed to make the Q2 cut altogether, qualifying his Audi down in 18th position for his home race.
Round 2 of the 2013 DTM takes place at 12:33 BST (13:33 CEST) on Sunday.