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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