Jamie Green is the benchmark in the eighth DTM race weekend at Spielberg: after his pole position for the race on Saturday, the Audi driver also secured the best starting grid position for the second race of the weekend on Sunday. With a lap time of 1m21.955s, Green qualified on pole position, the 13th of his DTM career. Pole on Saturday and Sunday: the only drivers before him to achieve that were Edoardo Mortara (Budapest, 2016) and António Félix da Costa (season finale Hockenheim, 2016).
Next to him on the front row of the grid for the 16th race of the season is fellow Audi driver René Rast, who missed out on valuable points for the drivers’ title after a spin in yesterday’s race. In the 20 minutes’ qualifying, Marco Wittmann secured third place on the grid with his BMW M4 DTM.
Mattias Ekström, the winner on Saturday and the leader in the points’ standings, finished eighth. In the race, the Swede will have a hard time to get to the front: with Gary Paffett and Timo Glock, one Mercedes-AMG and one BMW are immediately in front of him in sixth and seventh place on the grid, and the two BMWs of Tom Blomqvist and Bruno Spengler right behind him. Last on the grid for his home race is Lucas Auer with his Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM. However, the Austrian was only
0.727 seconds down on Green’s fastest time.
The second race at Spielberg in Austria will start at 15.15 hrs. The global TV broadcast schedule can be found here. Footage, live timing, live standings and additional information can also be found online at DTM.com/live.
Post-qualifying quotes
Jamie Green (Platz eins, Audi): „That is very rare in the DTM, one driver claiming both pole positions on one weekend. In 2015, I already won two races on one weekend at the Lausitzring. I want to win every race. But at the end of the day, the DTM is also a team affair. Audi is very motivated as far as the drivers’ title is concerned. That is our common goal.“
René Rast (Platz zwei, Audi): „Yesterday, I destroyed my car with a slight mistake on the opening lap. With the second set of tyres, there wasn’t much I could do. Today, I had a clean run with both sets. Jamie was a little bit faster than I. We can be happy with the team performance. Anything can still happen in the final three races. One bad qualifying and you are out of the points really quickly. There are still 81 points at stake. For me, everything is still possible as well, even though it will be very hard.“
Marco Wittmann (Platz drei, BMW): „Spielberg suits me, I have always been fast here. Once again, it will be a difficult race for us because the Audis are a bit stronger over the distance, but we will try our best. I am really happy with third place, I am glad to take that point.“
Source : dtm.com
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