BMW driver Wittmann, who sits 10th in the DTM standings and has yet to win a race this year, has two Moscow poles to his name and was again the standout over one lap in this session.

But a five-place grid penalty, assessed after Wittmann had picked up his third reprimand of the season at the Norisring, gave Audi driver Rast pole instead.

Rast, who had set the best lap in practice earlier on Saturday, was the first driver to surpass that benchmark – and did it in some style, his 1m27.179s effort representing an improvement of more than four tenths.

Championship leader Mattias Ekstrom made it an Audi 1-2 shortly thereafter, but the pair were then split by BMW duo Augusto Farfus and Timo Glock.

And at the halfway point in the session, it was the Bavarian marque that held the top spot, courtesy of Wittmann.

Nobody came close to matching the leading duo in the second half of the session, and while Rast himself was up on Wittmann's lap in the opening sector, he eventually found himself just a few thousandths on his previous best effort.

With Wittmann's penalty dropping him to sixth, Rast will be joined on the front row by fellow Audi driver Mike Rockenfeller, whose participation this weekend was in doubt after he sustained a fracture in his left foot in a heavy crash with Gary Paffett at the Norisring.

Rockenfeller could be seen limping around the paddock and using crutches, with McLaren F1 junior Nyck de Vries having been called up to be on stand-by, but the German had recovered enough to compete - and finished the session just two tenths off Wittmann.

Farfus and Glock will be on row two for BMW, ahead of Ekstrom, Wittmann, Jamie Green's Audi and Tom Blomqvist's BMW.

Mercedes' top driver Gary Paffett led Audi's Loic Duval in ninth, as the Silver Arrows endured a torrid qualifying session, their C63 DTM currently heaviest on the grid due to performance weights.

Duval will have to start 15th as he, like Wittmann, is serving a five-place grid penalty for having accumulated three warnings.

Among the Mercedes roster, Lucas Auer - who is just two points off Ekstrom in the standings - will only start 13th, while Edoardo Mortara ended his session with an off, placing 17th.

Cla	Driver	Car	Time	Gap
1	René Rast	Audi RS5 DTM	1'27.155	0.120
2	Mike Rockenfeller	Audi RS5 DTM	1'27.253	0.218
3	Augusto Farfus	BMW M4 DTM	1'27.340	0.305
4	Timo Glock	BMW M4 DTM	1'27.376	0.341
5	Mattias Ekström	Audi RS5 DTM	1'27.393	0.358
6	Marco Wittmann *	BMW M4 DTM	1'27.035
7	Jamie Green	Audi RS5 DTM	1'27.450	0.415
8	Tom Blomqvist	BMW M4 DTM	1'27.467	0.432
9	Gary Paffett	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'27.538	0.503
10	Bruno Spengler	BMW M4 DTM	1'27.612	0.577
11	Robert Wickens	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'27.625	0.590
12	Nico Müller	Audi RS5 DTM	1'27.734	0.699
13	Lucas Auer	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'27.757	0.722
14	Maxime Martin	BMW M4 DTM	1'27.786	0.751
15	Loic Duval *	Audi RS5 DTM	1'27.541	0.506
16	Paul di Resta	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'28.057	1.022
17	Edoardo Mortara	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'28.134	1.099
18	Maro Engel	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'28.382	1.347

* denotes five-place grid penalty