Zolder DTM: Habsburg takes shock pole from Rast

Fresh off his maiden podium in Saturday’s race, Habsburg fought for pole with form man Rast in the second qualifying, the two trading the times at the top of the timesheets.

Much like the first qualifying session of the weekend, Rast set the early benchmark with a 1m19.578s, before improving by a second to 1m18.489s on his second flyer. However, his fastest time was deleted for a breach of track limits, leaving him down in 13th place after the first set of runs.

Fabio Scherer led a surprise 1-2 for customer Audi team WRT at this point, leading Habsburg by just 0.023s, with BMW’s Jonathan Aberdein a further 0.028s behind.

After the drivers returned on track in the final five minutes of the session, Rast returned to the top of the charts with a time of 1m18.948s - only a tenth slower than lap with which he took pole on Saturday.

However, it proved to be insufficient for the top spot on the grid, Habsburg denying him a a third pole in four qualifying sessions with his final effort of 1m18.879s.

Robin Frijns qualified third fastest in the top Abt Audi car, only a tenth down on Habsburg, with Scherer making it two WRTs in the first two rows despite failing to improve on his second run.

Nico Muller, who lost his championship lead to Rast on Saturday, was only 0.156s slower than polesitter Habsburg, but it was only good enough for the fifth spot on the grid.

Aberdein again qualified as the top BMW driver in sixth, ahead of the Audi of Jamie Green, with Philipp Eng (BMW) a further two tenths behind in eighth. The top 10 was completed by the Audi of Mike Rockenfeller and ART BMW’s star driver Robert Kubica.

Two-time DTM champion Marco Wittmann again endured a difficult session, qualifying the last among the BMW stable in 15th place, only ahead on the grid of Loic Duval’s substitute Benoit Treluyer (Audi).

In a session where the temperature stayed below the 10C mark, the top 15 drivers were separated by just 0.9s, with debutant Treluyer the only driver missing the one-second cut.

Qualifying results:

Cla	#	Driver	Car	Time	Gap
1	62	Ferdinand Habsburg	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'18.879
2	33	René Rast	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'18.948	0.069
3	4	Robin Frijns	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'18.984	0.105
4	13	Fabio Scherer	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.012	0.133
5	51	Nico Müller	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.035	0.156
6	27	Jonathan Aberdein	BMW M4 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.063	0.184
7	53	Jamie Green	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.101	0.222
8	25	Philipp Eng	BMW M4 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.333	0.454
9	99	Mike Rockenfeller	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.388	0.509
10	8	Robert Kubica	BMW M4 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.412	0.533
11	31	Sheldon Van Der Linde	BMW M4 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.462	0.583
12	10	Harrison Newey	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.468	0.589
13	22	Lucas Auer	BMW M4 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.488	0.609
14	16	Timo Glock	BMW M4 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.540	0.661
15	11	Marco Wittmann	BMW M4 Turbo DTM 2020	1'19.725	0.846
16	19	Benoit Tréluyer	Audi RS5 Turbo DTM 2020	1'20.201	1.322
View full results