Nürburgring Nordschleife expert Benjamin Leuchter praised his SLR team after claiming a maiden pole position in the FIA World Touring Car Cup, with the German benefitting from a drying circuit.
Leuchter was a comfortable 1.4 seconds clear of Volkswagen team-mate Rob Huff in the second qualifying session on Thursday, giving the man who has lapped the 25.4 km circuit more than 1,000 times his first pole in the series.
Leuchter praised the efforts of his team, who put slick tyres on his car for his final run, after the session had earlier been affected by rain which left the notorious circuit very difficult to predict grip levels on.
“I saw very early that the track was drying up,” said Leuchter. “I informed my team to get the slicks on the side and the team did a fantastic job and at the right moment they gave me the tyres. I just went out and smashed the time.
“This is for the guys because they’ve worked so hard since Marrakech, we were quite confident at Zandvoort coming to our home race here at the Nürburgring and I really appreciate it to stand on the pole position.”
Before getting to start on pole, Leuchter will have to start Friday’s first race from tenth on the grid, after qualifying there in Thursday’s earlier session.
He will then start the reversed-grid second race on Saturday morning from the same position, before lining up in pole for race three.