Green takes Norisring pole

Green cruised through the preliminary sessions and banged in an unbeatable 48.489 seconds lap in the final period, two-hundredths faster than Schneider's best time. They led a Mercedes 1-2-3-4-5, as Audi huffed and puffed just to make it into the final top eight session.

"I'm enjoying my run of qualifying form," said Green. "I'm really happy, my car gave me the confidence to do the time. I did a really good lap in the second phase, and although my final time was slightly slower, it was still enough for pole."

Schneider, who looked set to topple Green after setting quicker splits, said: "Until the last corner it was looking good, but that has not been my friend this weekend. I had a chance to take the pole here, but Jamie showed once again he's the man to do it."

Bruno Spengler was third fastest in his 2006-spec Merc, while Jean Alesi broke the AMG stranglehold by grabbing fourth in his 2005-spec Mercedes, just 0.008 seconds quicker than fellow ex-F1 star Mika Hakkinen.

Mattias Ekstrom led the muted Audi challenge in sixth, but only made it through both preliminary rounds by the skin of his teeth. After almost losing out by 0.024 seconds to Mattias Lauda in Q1, then just 0.001 seconds to Christian Abt in Q2, he leapt up to sixth in Q3.

"I guess you could say I was lucky to be sixth after the first two sessions," said Ekstrom. "My car wasn't good at all until the last session. I did the best I could, but we have to hand it to Mercedes. We've got to be quicker if we're to get on the podium tomorrow."

The highest placed Audi driver in the championship, Tom Kristensen, was seventh quickest, ahead of the 2005-spec Audi of an impressive Timo Scheider. To underline Audi's woes, their 2006 cars of Martin Tomczyk and Heinz-Harald Frentzen failed to make it through Q1 and Q2 respectively.

Pos  Driver                 Team               Time              Laps
 1.  Jamie Green            Mercedes C-Klasse  48.489              8
 2.  Bernd Schneider        Mercedes C-Klasse  48.509  +  0.020    9
 3.  Bruno Spengler         Mercedes C-Klasse  48.622  +  0.133    8
 4.  Jean Alesi             Mercedes C-Klasse  48.647  +  0.158    8
 5.  Mika Hakkinen          Mercedes C-Klasse  48.655  +  0.166    8
 6.  Mattias Ekstrom        Audi A4            48.676  +  0.187    8
 7.  Tom Kristensen         Audi A4            48.717  +  0.228    8
 8.  Timo Scheider          Audi A4            48.925  +  0.436    7
 9.  Christian Abt          Audi A4            48.787  +  0.298    8
10.  Frank Stippler         Audi A4            48.789  +  0.300    9
11.  Daniel la Rosa         Mercedes C-Klasse  48.789  +  0.300   11
12.  Heinz-Harald Frentzen  Audi A4            48.949  +  0.460    9
13.  Alexandros Margaritis  Mercedes C-Klasse  48.949  +  0.460   11
14.  Pierre Kaffer          Audi A4            49.417  +  0.928   11
15.  Mathias Lauda          Mercedes C-Klasse  49.065  +  0.576   12
16.  Martin Tomczyk         Audi A4            49.069  +  0.580    7
17.  Susie Stoddart         Mercedes C-Klasse  49.331  +  0.842   12
18.  Jeroen Bleekemolen     Audi A4            49.409  +  0.920   12
19.  Stefan Mucke           Mercedes C-Klasse  49.797  +  1.308    4
20.  Vanina Ickx            Audi A4            49.936  +  1.447   12