Mercedes-Benz’s Robert Wickens scored his first DTM pole of his career as he took pole position at the Norisring, beating fellow Canadian Bruno Spengler to the top time by 0.059 seconds.
Click here for the full Round 5 qualifying results.
Wickens took to the track in third for the final Q4 shoot-out, posting the pole lap of 48.384 seconds, which reigning champion Spengler was unable to better on his only Q4 run. The result is the first time that two Canadians have occupied the front row of the grid in DTM history, and also the first time that 24 year-old Wickens will start from the front row in a DTM race.
“It’s amazing,” said Wickens. “When I heard that I was P1 I just went numb and didn’t really know what to do! It’s a great feeling, as this track is a bit special for me. I got my first points in the DTM here last year. It’s a good place, I like it and hopefully tomorrow will go well.”
Winner last time out, Paffett’s time put him third on the grid for tomorrow’s race, 0.076 seconds slower than Wickens. Audi’s Edoardo Mortara will start fourth as the only Audi driver to make it into the Q4 shootout.
Mercedes’ rookie Pascal Wehrlein scored his best-ever qualifying result with fifth, missing out on a first-ever appearance in Q4 by just 0.017 seconds. He will be joined by BMW’s Andy Priaulx in sixth, who equalled his best-ever qualifying result in the German series.
Daniel Juncadella also enjoyed his best-ever qualifying result in seventh, ahead of the second Rosberg Audi of Filipe Albuqerque in eigth.
Audi’s Mattias Ekström and Mercedes’ Christian Vietoris completed the top ten, with Vietoris making it five out of six Mercedes inside the top ten.
Adrien Tambay missed out on entry into Q3 and will start from 11th, whilst the master of the Norisring, Jamie Green, continued to struggle for single-lap pace and will start down in 14th – the Audi driver’s lowest-ever starting position on the street circuit.
Today in qyualifying the pace wasn’t bad but just to get the perfect lap together was a problem for me,” admitted a disappointed Green. “I had some traffic here and there because it’s always busy around here. When you don’t get the set-up perfect – if you miss one tenth – then you’re way down the order, it’s so close and that’s the way it is.”
Former champion Martin Tomczyk’s disappointing season continued with the BMW Team RMG driver failing to get out of Q1 for the third time so far this season. Tomczyk will start from 17th for the race.
Joint championship leader Mike Rockenfeller also had a qualifying session to get, qualifying down in 19th place and failing to even get out of Q1.
Round 5 of the 2013 DTM takes place at 13:33 CEST on Sunday (12:33 BST).