René Rast will start from pole position in the second and final race of the DTM Assen weekend, heading an Audi Sport dominated session.
Championship leader Rast’s time of a 1:24.849 was enough to beat Jonathan Aberdein to top spot by 0.132 seconds, as the South African was the only other driver to set a sub-1:25 lap.
Mike Rockenfeller did enough to take third, 0.168s away from Rast, signalling a vast improvement from his efforts in Saturday’s Qualifying 1 session – when he finished ninth.
Audi drivers claimed the top five spots in second qualifying, with BMW‘s Sheldon van der Linde the fastest of the other two marques in sixth place.
Race 1 winner Marco Wittmann suffered a terrible session, losing drive on his first flying lap and did not have another chance to set a representative lap – despite frantic repair work from the BMW mechanics.
Wittmann was also subject to a stewards’ investigation about impeding Rast out of the final chicane, but claimed on the radio that he had lost power and did not block the Audi intentionally.
Robin Frijns was the fastest man after the first set of fast runs in the 20-minute session, a 1:25.102 left him 0.150s ahead of Rast and a further 0.136s quicker than Duval.
Philipp Eng threatened a challenge to the Audi whitewash, making it inside the top four in the first half of the session, but the BMW driver fell away in the final set of flying laps.
Frijns did not attempt to better his time, despite leaving the garage with plenty of time remaining, and pulled into parc fermé with around three minutes of the session left.
The Dutchman then started to fall down the order, as Rast, Aberdein, Rockenfeller and Nico Müller all improved, leaving him in a dissatisfactory fifth place.
Van der Linde sat comfortably ahead of Duval, who was followed by two more BMW’s in the order of Eng and Timo Glock.
Pietro Fittipaldi rounded out the top 10, making Jamie Green the only Audi driver to qualify outside of the top 10 in thirteenth.
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