This pole position is very important: In qualifying at the ADAC GT Masters at the Lausitzring, Christian Engelhart showed the strengths of the Porsche 911 GT3 R in the rain and secured pole position for himself and Ayhancan Güven for Saturday’s race.
Engelhart marked the best time of 1:35.598 minutes about halfway through the session. The ex-champion thus remained 0.137 seconds ahead of Patric Niederhauser, who drove into the front row with the Rutronik-Audi #15 (Niederhauser/Engstler).
With third place, Maximilian Paul gave the Paul-Lamborghini #71 (Mapelli/Paul) the best grid position of the season. The local hero is the best Lamborghini. In general, all four Huracan GT3 Evo made it into the top 10, because Emil Frey Racing brought their vehicles to positions four, six and seven.
Points leader Raffaele Marciello in the Landgraf-Mercedes #48 (Marciello/Juncadella) did not get past tenth place on the grid.
Fabian Schiller landed the second-placed ZVO-Mercedes #4 (Gounon/Schiller) directly in front of him in ninth place, so an exciting duel between the championship leaders can be expected. Remarkable is the fifth starting place of returnee Marvin Dienst.
Several spectacular deposits in training
Thanks to Tim Zimmermann, the Land-Motorsport team, which was favored in the dry, brought the Audi #1 (Mies/Zimmermann) into eighth place in the top 10. Championship candidate Jusuf Owega, the fastest on Friday, only managed 13th place.
The entire field immediately left the track when the pit lights switched. The times dropped with every lap in the first half. Then the times fluctuated around 1:35 minutes.
Dienst took center stage in the ZVO-Mercedes #8 (Dienst/Marschalkowski) and was the first to break the 1:36 mark. His time should only be beaten four times: by Costa, Paul, Niederhauser and Engelhart.
Several cars pitted in the second half of the session to adjust the air pressures, including Marciello, who was only P13 at the time.
There were several spectacular performances during training, but they all ended lightly. The most spectacular departure was made by Florian Spengler in the Car Collection Audi #69 (Winkelhock/Spengler), which had an oncoming commuter exiting turn 7. He could prevent an impact.
The race starts as usual at 1 p.m. Nitro will be broadcasting live from 12:30 p.m.