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Red Bull Ring DTM: Paffett grabs race two pole to narrow title fight

Mercedes DTM veteran Gary Paffett hit back after a disappointing first race at the Red Bull Ring by grabbing pole for Sunday's event

Paffett, who lost the series lead to Mercedes team-mate Paul di Resta on Saturday after finishing a lowly 10th, beat Audi's Nico Muller to the top spot by 0.028 seconds.

With di Resta taking third position, Paffett has narrowed the gap to di Resta to seven points from nine.

The session took place on a mainly dry track, although there were damp patches on the asphalt owing to overnight precipitation and a mainly overcast morning.

Reigning champion Rene Rast looked to be continuing his late-season resurgence and 2018 title attack, which climaxed with a third successive win in Saturday's race, by topping the times on the first runs by just 0.003s from Muller.

But Rast could not improve on his second set of Hankook tyres, and plummeted to eighth position in the starting line-up.

First it was Pascal Wehrlein who snatched provisional pole for Mercedes, followed rapidly by Muller, before Paffett finally set the session topper.

Muller improved again on his final lap, but could not quite match Paffett.

Behind di Resta, Edoardo Mortara and Wehrlein made it four Mercedes runners in the top five, before an impressive effort from rookie Joel Eriksson - the best driver from the BMW stable.

Another BMW, that of Timo Glock, was seventh, and will share the fourth row with Rast.

On-the-road Saturday winner Daniel Juncadella briefly propelled himself up to third with an early second run, before his Mercedes slipped to ninth, with the BMW of Philipp Eng rounding out the top 10.

World Rally hero Sebastien Ogier continued the rate of improvement that resulted in an impressive run at the end of the first race - he was slowest again, but this time his Mercedes was within a quarter of a second of the next-slowest runner.

Qualifying Result

Pos Driver Team Car Gap
1 Gary Paffett HWA Mercedes 1m23.404s
2 Nico Muller Abt Audi 0.028s
3 Paul Di Resta HWA Mercedes 0.228s
4 Edoardo Mortara HWA Mercedes 0.308s
5 Pascal Wehrlein HWA Mercedes 0.344s
6 Joel Eriksson RBM BMW 0.369s
7 Timo Glock RMR BMW 0.449s
8 Rene Rast Rosberg Audi 0.462s
9 Daniel Juncadella HWA Mercedes 0.481s
10 Philipp Eng RMR BMW 0.565s
11 Robin Frijns Abt Audi 0.610s
12 Jamie Green Rosberg Audi 0.636s
13 Mike Rockenfeller Phoenix Audi 0.666s
14 Lucas Auer HWA Mercedes 0.729s
15 Bruno Spengler RBM BMW 0.781s
16 Augusto Farfus RMG BMW 0.846s
17 Marco Wittmann RMG BMW 1.018s
18 Loic Duval Phoenix Audi 1.048s
19 Sebastien Ogier HWA Mercedes 1.296s


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