Tom Blomqvist took a surprise pole position for the second DTM race at Moscow, edging out BMW team-mate Bruno Spengler by six hundredths of a second.
Having blitzed the field in FP3, Audi were looking strong going into qualifying. In the early stages of the session, Mike Rockenfeller and then René Rast were setting the pace, but the fastest laptime tumbled aggressively in the last seconds of qualifying.
Mattias Ekström had been the first driver to break the into the 1m 26s range, but was consequently usurped by Spengler and then Blomqvist. He remained as the lead Audi to line up third on the grid for this afternoon’s second race.
Championship leader Rast held fourth, two tenths off the pace set by Blomqvist, while the lead Mercedes was Paul di Resta, rounding out the top five.
BMW ensured all but one of their cars would start in the Top 10, with positions six through eight locked out by Timo Glock, Marco Wittmann and Maxime Martin, all covered by less than four hundredths of a second.
The only Bavarian car missing from the top half of the grid was Augusto Farfus, who ruined his final flying lap by skating off into the grass at Turn 10. He qualified only 13th fastest, but will start from 12th thanks to a five place grid drop for Jamie Green, who had gone 11th quickest but will start the race from 16th.
Farfus was also somewhat unlucky in the timing of his first qualifying attempt. He was one of three drivers to set an identical laptime of 1:27.230, losing out on what would turn out to be 11th after Green’s penalty to Robert Wickens, who had set the same time earlier in the session. Lucas Auer was the last of the three drivers to set the identical time, putting him 14th quickest and 13th on the grid.
[table id=2261 /]
* Five place grid penalty