The sunshine and crowds were out to witness a breathtaking final qualifying session for the 2014 DTM championship, as Spain’s Miguel Molina struck at the right to take his first pole position since the Hockenheim finale three years ago.
The Audi Sport driver led a top three whitewash, as Molina took pole by just 0.016 seconds from Zandvoort race winner Mattias Ekström, with Edoardo Mortara less than a tenth away from the pole sitter.
Augusto Farfus was the sole BMW representative in Q3, as Marco Wittmann failed to make it for the first and only time into the final shootout, ending up 13th for tomorrow’s race. Jamie Green took fifth in a heated qualifying through all three sessions, which saw the grid split by just 1.127 seconds.
Pascal Wehrlein was the only Mercedes-Benz driver to make it to Q3, as the youngest race winner in the series’ history was just 0.003 seconds off Green. Team Phoenix had both outgoing champion Mike Rockenfeller and Timo Scheider qualify in seventh and eighth, ahead of António Félix da Costa and Paul Di Resta, who rounded out the top ten.
Season opener pole sitter Adrien Tambay narrowly missed out on the top ten, as the French driver was a mere fraction off the Scot, who won the title back in 2010. Robert Wickens will start from 12th ahead of Wittmann, with Bruno Spengler and Maxime Martin taking the next two places.
Gary Paffett was pushing hard to get into the top 8, which was shown by him going sideways into turn 1 early in qualifying. However, the Brit was to end up 16th ahead of stablemate Daniel Juncadella. Nico Müller just made into Q2, which saw Timo Glock to be one of three BMW drivers eliminated early in Q1. The race winner at the season finale from last year was joined by Martin Tomczyk and Joey Hand, with the latter suffering with a left door issue throughout the majority of Q1.
After the left door was taped up, Hand was still able to post a lap time, with both Vitaly Petrov and Christian Vietoris completing the grid for tomorrow’s race.
42 laps could see a major shift in the final race of the year, as the manufacturers’ title is still too close to call. However, everyone will be out to push to the limit, so will a BMW dream clean sweep happens? Time will only tell, and it’s fast running out.
The final race of the 2014 season starts at 14.00 local time tomorrow.
