Qual: Tomczyk scoops pole

Tomczyk lapped the east German circuit in 1m20.752s on his Super Pole lap, which Kristensen just failed to match later on.

"Super Pole wasn't my best lap of the weekend but it was enough for pole," said Tomczyk. "I've been happy with the car since the start of the weekend and I feel well prepared to go for victory tomorrow."

Kristensen said: "The car was working fantastically, but I didn't quite get my Super Pole lap completely together. When you push hard you can always find little mistakes."

Gary Paffett will start third for Mercedes, the Briton having won the previous two races. He was a little disappointed with his lap, feeling that he was too cautious in the early stages.

"I made a lot of mistakes and went two-tenths faster in pre-qualifying, so I'm not happy with it," said Paffett. "The car and myself were both quick enough to be on pole today."

AMG team-mate Bernd Schneider will start fourth, ahead of the top Opel of Manuel Reuter. Title protagonists Christijan Albers (Mercedes) and points leader Mattias Ekstrom (Audi) were sixth and seventh, the latter setting the fastest final sector time, but unfortunately that wasn't enough to make up for his poor start to the lap. Ekstrom was quickest in the pre-qualifying session, but his time was a quarter of a second off the pace when it mattered.

Opel's Peter Dumbreck, Laurent Aiello and Timo Scheider rounded out the top 10 as the marque failed to repeat the promise of practice and testing. All three were well over half a second off the pace and all made major mistakes on their flying laps.

Adding to Opel's woe, Heinz-Harald Frentzen was forced to miss qualifying due to illness. He is currently resting in his hotel room and hopes to be fit to race on Sunday.