Martin Tomczyk claimed pole position for the DTM race at the re-opened Red Bull Ring at Spielberg in Austria in a wet qualifying session.
The German Phoenix Audi driver had gone second quickest in the penultimate Q3 session behind fellow 2008-spec Audi driver Edoardo Mortara, and therefore ran third in the final Q4 pole position shootout. He improved on Oliver Jarvis‘s time to take provisional pole, before Mortara posted the slowest time of the quartet to give Tomczyk pole.
“Pole position was our goal after everything went very well so far this weekend,” said the 29-year-old. “Everything has to fit together in order to achieve a good lap time. Apparently, that has worked out today. It is the best position to win a race.”
Jarvis will join Tomczyk on the front row in his Abt Audi, ahead of Ralf Schumacher who was surprisingly the quickest of the Mercedes, with Mortara fourth in his Rosberg Audi.
Heavy rain saw incidents for the two Red Bull-backed Abt Audis of Mattias Ekstrom and Miguel Molina in Q1. Both aquaplaned upon entering the pit lane and hit the barriers. This leaves them at the back of the field for the race.
The difficult conditions saw the red flag come out at the start of Q2, with all 14 qualifying drivers allowed through to Q3, which began twenty minutes later. Among the drivers to be knocked out in that session were the three HWA Mercedes of Gary Paffett, Jamie Green and Bruno Spengler, who will start the race in eighth, ninth and twelfth respectively. Behind the top four, Mike Rockenfeller was fifth, Maro Engel sixth and Timo Scheider seventh.
