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Brands Hatch DTM: Martin Tomczyk takes his first pole in a BMW

Martin Tomczyk took his first DTM pole position for nearly two years after edging out Mike Rockenfeller in qualifying at Brands Hatch

NEWS UPDATE: Tomczyk stripped of pole

The 2011 champion, who had not started from the front of the grid since joining BMW last year, topped Q3 in his RMG M3 and then carried that form into the single-lap Q4 session afterwards.

His 41.158s lap in Q4 beat that of Phoenix Audi driver Rockenfeller by 0.035 seconds and gave Tomczyk his first pole since the Spielberg race in 2011.

Behind Rockenfeller, championship leader Augusto Farfus will start third, with his RBM team-mate Joey Hand a career-best fourth.

Champion Bruno Spengler just failed to make it into Q4 in fifth, the Schnitzer BMW driver qualifying ahead of Hockenheim polesitter Timo Scheider's Abt Audi and the MTEK BMW of Marco Wittmann, who took the best qualifying spot of his short DTM career.

Tomczyk's team-mate Andy Priaulx was a season's best eighth - his third top-10 qualifying result in the past four races - while Edoardo Mortara and Q2 pacesetter Miguel Molina completed the top 10.

No Mercedes driver qualified inside the top 10. The best of them was last year's Brands Hatch winner Gary Paffett in 12th, one place ahead of another former champion, Audi's Mattias Ekstrom.

Paffett looked like he had been knocked out in Q1 when fellow Briton Jamie Green went sixth fastest on his final lap of the session.

But Green's lap time was quickly struck off because the Abt Audi driver had started it a tenth of a second after the chequered flag came out.

As a result he was left in 18th spot, behind Paffett's HWA team-mate Christian Vietoris.

Pos  Driver              Team/Car        Time     Gap
 1.  Martin Tomczyk      RMG BMW         41.158s
 2.  Mike Rockenfeller   Phoenix Audi    41.193s  + 0.035s
 3.  Augusto Farfus      RBM BMW         41.197s  + 0.039s
 4.  Joey Hand           RBM BMW         41.460s  + 0.302s
 5.  Bruno Spengler      Schnitzer BMW   41.274s  Q3
 6.  Timo Scheider       Abt Audi        41.282s  Q3
 7.  Marco Wittmann      MTEK BMW        41.293s  Q3
 8.  Andy Priaulx        RMG BMW         41.358s  Q3
 9.  Edoardo Mortara     Rosberg Audi    41.394s  Q3
10.  Miguel Molina       Phoenix Audi    41.472s  Q3
11.  Timo Glock          MTEK BMW        41.353s  Q2
12.  Gary Paffett        HWA Mercedes    41.363s  Q2
13.  Mattias Ekstrom     Abt Audi        41.401s  Q2
14.  Robert Wickens      HWA Mercedes    41.440s  Q2
15.  Dirk Werner         Schnitzer BMW   41.480s  Q2
16.  Adrien Tambay       Abt Audi        41.539s  Q2
17.  Christian Vietoris  HWA Mercedes    41.709s  Q1
18.  Jamie Green         Abt Audi        41.727s  Q1
19.  Filipe Albuquerque  Rosberg Audi    41.745s  Q1
20.  Roberto Merhi       HWA Mercedes    41.748s  Q1
21.  Pascal Wehrlein     Mucke Mercedes  41.783s  Q1
22.  Daniel Juncadella   Mucke Mercedes  41.787s  Q1

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