BMW’s Bruno Spengler took pole position in qualifying for the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters at Oschersleben, beating Audi’s Jamie Green and fellow BMW racer Augusto Farfus to his 16th career pole.
Click here for the full qualifying results.
Canadian Spengler was in the top six throughout each of the our qualifying segments in a session which was run largely in the dry despite several light rain showers threatening to mix things up. Following qualifying, reigning champion Spengler admitted he was delighted to be back at the front after a difficult couple of races recently.
“I’m very happy to get this pole, also for the team, because we struggled in the last couple of races,” said Spengler. “We got kicked out and had no points, and then our performance wasn’t good enough. The team worked really hard day and night to try to understand and improve our cars and now we have better cars.
“The car is really performing and it was a lot of fun today in this qualifying to bring the pole home for the team and myself,” added Spengler. “I’m so happy and I tihnk from there everything is possible tomorrow. We have to see the weather conditions, but I’m prepared for everything.”
Brit Green took his best qualifying result of the season and his best qualifying performance since the Norisring in 2012 with second, ahead of Farfus and championship leader Mike Rockenfeller.
BMW’s Dirk Werner, who made it into the Q4 shootout at Oschersleben in 2012, missed out on entry to Q4 by just 0.031 seconds and will start from fifth. Filipe Albuquerque, who has been on strong form throughout the weekend, qualified his Audi in sixth.
Mercedes’ Gary Paffett qualified in seventh but is faced with a five-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race, after his HWA team fitted his car with a set of slicks in free practice which were not allocated to his car for the weekend. Paffett will thus start from 13th.
Audi’s Miguel Molina qualified in eighth, ahead of BMW’s Martin Tomczyk who enjoyed his best qualifying result since the third round of the season at the Red Bull Ring. Audi’s Timo Scheider completed the top ten – also his best qualifying performance since round three.
Rockenfeller took a small step closer to the title in qualifying after his two main championship rivals, Mercedes’ Christian Vietoris and Robert Wickens, endured difficult sessions. Whilst Vietoris was unable to make it out of Q1 and will start from 21st – his worst qualifying result in three years racing in the DTM, Wickens only made it one session further and qualified in 12th, which becomes 11th on the grid after Paffett’s penalty.
Round eight of the 2013 DTM takes place at 12:30 BST on Sunday (13:30 CEST) and will be broadcast live at TouringCars.Net.