Nico Müller has extended his championship lead by taking Saturday pole for the DTM round at the Nürburgring.
The Swiss driver lapped the German Formula One venue, which will host a Grand Prix later this year, in a best time of 01:46:834 upon DTM’s return to the track for the first time since pre-season testing.
Müller was the only driver to set a sub-1:47 lap time, beating Audi rival Rene Rast to pole position by 0.221s.
Rast and Müller traded the top time back and forth throughout the session, with championship leader Müller ultimately besting Rast with a late flyer to seal pole position.
Robin Frijns, who has been strong in qualifying throughout the season thus far, could not beat the pair and will start third, more than half a second off the pole time. He is joined on the second row by BMW’s Marco Wittmann.
Mike Rockenfeller alongside Ferdinand Habsburg in sixth place. Sheldon van der Linde, who took his maiden race win at Assen last time out, was seventh. The top ten was completed by Jamie Green, Loic Duval and Philipp Eng.
Lucas Auer, who celebrated his 26th birthday on Friday, will line up in eleventh ahead of Timo Glock and Jonathan Aberdein. Aberdein had a trip through the gravel on the exit of the Michael Schumacher-S on one of his flying laps, but was able to continue without damage.
He outpaced the three 2020 rookies, with Harrison Newey quickest of the three in fourteenth ahead of Robert Kubica and Fabio Scherer.
