Ferdinand von Habsburg was elated to score his first-ever pole position in the DTM at Zolder on Sunday, even though the WRT Audi driver admitted that he had made ‘many mistakes’ in the session.
Habsburg edged out championship leader René Rast by just 0.069 seconds in the second qualifying session of the weekend to claim pole in the very final seconds of the session.
The result comes just a day after the Austrian secured his first-ever podium finish in the series as well, with the 23-year-old clearly on a roll in Belgium.
Despite taking pole, Habsburg admitted that he had berated himself on his final lap as he felt that he could have been even quicker.
“I feel like the champion of the session,” said an elated von Habsburg. “I’m so happy because I made so many mistakes in that session.
“I knew I had it from yesterday’s qualifying that I could do it, and I was getting more and more angry. I was like ‘OK man, take a deep breath, you’ve got one more lap to give it everything you’ve got’.
“I overdrove it a bit in the first sector, I had a lot of oversteer, and I knew it wasn’t great, but I could still do something, and I went down to Turn 5 on the straight and I gave myself a virtual smacking. I was like ‘come on, let’s go’.
“I gave it my best and I nailed it. I haven’t even seen the times what the gaps were, but it feels like I just got it so I’m very happy.”
Having missed out on pole, Rast was not happy to have qualified in second, even though he was ahead of both of his title rivals Robin Frijns and Nico Müller.
“With P2, I’m not happy,” said Rast. “I just didn’t pull everything together. On the first set of tyres I was P1, but I just hit the cones slightly so my lap time got cancelled.
“On the second outing I was just in the traffic. I had Kubica ahead of me and then [Sheldon] van der Linde. There was lots of interfering and I couldn’t get a clean lap together unfortunately, but that’s how it is sometimes.”
Race two is scheduled to begin at 13:30 CEST (12:30 BST).