Klaus Weber · DTM-Korrespondent
Three tenths of a second separate the top ten in the first qualifying session, while two Ford Mustangs from HRT Ford Performance trail the leader by over a minute.
Matteo Cairoli posted the fastest lap of the opening qualifying session at the Nürburgring for Emil Frey Racing with a time of 1:25.345 minutes, improving his own best from the first practice by 0.799 seconds. The gap to tenth place ultimately came down to just 0.301 seconds, a margin that underscores the competitive depth of the current DTM season. For Cairoli, the pole position also brought three championship points, while Thomas Preining and Lucas Auer claimed two and one points respectively as second and third.
Field Compressed Within Three Tenths
The improvement from practice to qualifying was consistent across nearly all drivers. Cairoli made up roughly eight tenths, while Preining crossed the line in 1:25.381, just 0.036 seconds adrift, confirming the pace he showed in the second session where he had logged the day's quickest lap at 1:25.517. Auer's 1:25.423 in third demonstrated that the Mercedes-AMG Team Landgraf driver maintained strong front-running pace in qualifying trim after already finishing second in the morning session.
Marco Wittmann completed the top four with 1:25.450, as the qualifying order largely scrambled the running order from both practice sessions. Kelvin van der Linde, who had been fifth in the first practice and third in the second, fell back to tenth place, 0.301 seconds adrift of pole position. This points to different priorities in tire selection and setup between the free sessions and the decisive qualifying run, a common occurrence in closely regulated GT3 fields with Balance of Performance adjustments.
Dörr Motorsport Emerges Strong
Ben Dörr delivered the session's most striking improvement. Having qualified 18th in the morning practice and seventh in the afternoon, he jumped to fifth on the grid with 1:25.524, just 0.179 seconds behind Cairoli's pole time. For the customer team Dörr Motorsport, this result must still be confirmed in race trim with a full fuel load and higher tire degradation, but in the single-lap qualifying format it already carries weight since front row starts often determine the flow of racing in the opening lap.
His teammate Timo Glock, however, could not break into the top positions, posting 1:25.959 for 18th place, roughly 0.4 seconds slower than Dörr. The gap within the same team running identical machinery illustrates how much a single perfect qualifying lap determines the outcome in such a tightly bunched field.
HRT Ford Performance Falls Far Behind
The qualifying result proved far more troubling for HRT Ford Performance. Arjun Maini, seventh in the morning practice, managed only 2:07.997 in qualifying, trailing the best time by 42.652 seconds, while Finn Wiebelhaus registered 1:37.465, over 12 seconds adrift. Both drivers rounded out the grid in the final two positions, far removed from a field otherwise compressed within tenths of a second.
The result comes at a difficult moment for HRT Ford Performance, which already faces intense scrutiny: both Mustang GT3s must serve a drive-through penalty during Sunday's race following a testing regulation breach, reportedly the severest such penalty in DTM history. How the poor grid positions combine with the mandatory pit stop penalty to shape the race remains to be seen, but for a team already forced to fight from the back in such a competitive field, there is little margin for additional error during the penalty window.
