Marco Wittmann has taken pole position for the Saturday DTM race at Brands Hatch. The German beat out compatriot and rival Rene Rast by 0.069s in a frantic session that involved rain, a drying track and a red flag.
The session was red flagged early on when both Jonathan Aberdein and Pietro Fittipaldi crashed their Team WRT Audi RS5 DTMs at Clearways. First, Aberdein went for a relatively harmless trip through the gravel and into the tyre barrier but was soon followed by his Brazilian team-mate in a much more serious manner.
Fittipaldi lost the rear end of his #21 Audi in the corner and slid into the gravel at speed, crashing rear-first into the barrier, wrecking his car in the process. Both Fittipaldi and Aberdein were unharmed.
🚩 RED FLAG 🚩
Huge shunt for Pietro Fittipaldi at Turn One.
The session's been halted to repair the barriers.#DTMBrandsHatch 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/fXYqqLDQ10
— DTM (@DTM) August 10, 2019
When the session resumed, drivers were faced with the prospect of choosing between dry and rain tyres. Jake Dennis was one of the first to make the correct choice, putting his Aston Martin on slicks and setting scorching lap times which nearly put him a second clear of the rest of the field. Soon, however, the other drivers began to catch up, ultimately dropping Dennis to seventh place.
Rast then took over from Dennis and set a 01:15:723, which appeared to put him on pole until Wittmann, who had been tenth up until then, came out of nowhere to set a 01:15:654, which was enough to take pole.
Loic Duval took third, some three-tenths further back with Paul di Resta underlining R-Motorsport's strong pace with a fourth place time. Robin Frijns was fifth, with Sheldon van der Linde sixth ahead of Dennis, Nico Müller, Timo Glock and Daniel Juncadella.
