13:18
26 cars within one second
All in all, qualifying was incredibly tight again. 26 of the 27 cars were within one second at the end of qualifying. A small mistake made a huge difference.
13:11
Rast benefits
René Rast benefits from the demotions. He has moved up from ninth place in qualifying to seventh on the grid. Nico Müller starts behind him in front of Clemens Schmid and Maximilian Buhk.
13:03
Punitive transfer for van der Linde and Preining
Sheldon van der Linde and Thomas Preining had qualified in the top ten, but have to accept a penalty transfer, which is a severe setback in the tight championship fight. Both have to go back ten places. The reason for this is that tires were fitted to the vehicles between 1 hour and 5 minutes before qualifying, which is not permitted according to Article 35.1 of the DTM Technical Regulations. Van der Linde is now 16th, Preining has to start from 18th. Dennis Olsen also has to go backwards for this reason. The Norwegian only had mathematical chances.
12:59 p.m
Auer secures pole
At the grand finale in Hockenheim, five drivers are still among the favorites for the title. One of them is Lucas Auer, who was able to reduce his gap to championship leader Sheldon van der Linde to just eight points by taking pole position in a tight qualifying session. Auer set a time of 1:36.479 minutes and thus landed 0.061 seconds ahead of brand colleague Luca Stolz, who, being sixth in the overall standings, also still has a mathematical chance of winning the title. Mirko Bortolotti still secured a point in the close fight for the title.
Warm welcome!
The penultimate race of the current season is scheduled for the Hockenheimring. The Saturday race starts at 1:30 p.m.!