Mercedes-Benz’s Christian Vietoris scored his first-ever Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters pole position at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz, beating Brit Gary Paffett to pole by 0.225 seconds.
Click here for the full Round 4 qualifying results.
Vietoris, 24, had been consistently fast throughout qualifying and was no lower than sixth throughout the session. The young German’s time was good enough to secure him his first pole in the DTM over experienced racer Paffett. It is only the second time in his career to-date that Vietoris has qualified on the front-row of the grid.
Jamie Green made it into Q4 for the first time in 2013 and qualified his Audi third, whilst Robert Wickens ensured that Mercedes’ experienced a complete turn-around of form by making it three Mercedes inside the top four, after the manufacturer’s disastrous qualifying so far this season. Wickens felt he could have gone quicker and complained of oversteer in turn seven which cost him time.
Just missing out on entry into Q4 was reigning champion Bruno Spengler who was also the top BMW pilot in a difficult session for the Munich manufacturer. Spengler’s main championship rival, Audi’s Mike Rockenfeller will start alongside the Canadian in sixth.
Audi’s Adrien Tambay and Edoardo Mortara will start the race from seventh and eighth respectively, whilst Mercedes’ Roberto Merhi and BMW’s Augusto Farfus completed the top ten, with Farfus only the second BMW inside Q3.
Mercedes’ young rookie Pascal Wehrlein just missed out on entry into Q3 and will start from 11th, ahead of BMW’s Dirk Werner.
Several big names failed to make it into Q3, with former champions Timo Scheider and Mattias Ekström languishing down in 17th and 18th for Audi.
Having struggled for pace in free practice, BMW continued to struggle around the east German circuit. Its drivers will occupy the back four rows of the grid, where Marco Wittmann and Joey Hand start 19th and 20th and BMW Team RMG’s Andy Priaulx and Martin Tomczyk 21st and 22nd. Tomczyk had a night mare qualifying session in particular and was unable to set a competitive time due to problems with his car’s front splitter.
Round 4 of the 2013 DTM takes place at 13:33 CEST on Sunday (12:33 BST).