The history-making events of the DTM continues, as bright sunshine was flooding over the Dutzendteich this afternoon, where we saw another man take pole position this season, Mercedes-Benz’s Robert Wickens has been consistent in his form during qualifying throughout the first half of the season, and starts in pole position, as a part of the first ever Canadian DTM front-row lockout, with defending champion, Bruno Spengler just 0.059 seconds behind his countryman in the Q4 1–lap shootout.
It was all looking rather ominous in the latter stages, as early casualties included “Mr. Norisring,” Audi Sport’s Jamie Green, who suffered damage during Q2 and ended up in P14, with BMW Motorsport’s Augusto Farfus, who won the season opener at Hockenheim, a lowly 15th. Martin Tomczyk’s barren run of form continues, as the 2011 champion has not had any points scoring finishes since August last year, as he will line up alongside fellow BMW alumni members Joey Hand and ex-F1 driver Timo Glock in 17th place.
Current points leader, Mike Rockenfeller was way down the order, ending up in only P19 for tomorrow’s race, a far cry from where he had hoped, but holding Ingolstadt’s head high this time around again was Italy’s Edoardo Mortara, who was battling against Gary Paffett, Spengler and Wickens, taking P4 behind the Brit.
Andy Priaulx was a man possessed around the Nuremberg-located street track, as he was even as high as P1 in Q2, before securing his best qualifying of the season in P6, which equals his best DTM career finish to date. Adrien Tambay and team mate Timo Scheider were able to make it into Q2 as well, with several of the drivers scraping the wall at times as they pushed hard, with both Team Abt drivers in P11 and P13 for the race.
Mattias Ekstrom ended up in P9, having suffered an eventful spin early on, behind the likes of DTM rookies, Pascal Wehrlein and Daniel Juncadella, as well as Audi’s Filipe Albuquerque, who were blitzing the 2.3km, 3-corner high-speed track, qualifying P5, P7 and P8 respectively. Local man, Marco Wittmann, got himself into the midfield, missing out getting in to the top ten, as he ended up in P12.
So the bumpy surface of the Norisring has made things difficult for many of the top drivers that have been here numerous times before, but we will find out just who will end up in the points tomorrow, as weather can play a part, as well as making sure that it all works out on the day. We’ll find out just who gets the glory in Nuremberg tomorrow, as anything can happen in the DTM, and the way this season has gone, it usually does…
