Qualifying: Abt scores maiden pole

The Abt Sportsline Audi TT-R pilot set his time of 1m37.760s just at the right time as oil went down with 10 minutes to go, stopping the session. Despite its resumption after a clean-up operation, a number of cars went off and caused yellow flag zones around the circuit.

"I'm very relieved to have made the step on to pole," said Abt, whose brother runs the privateer team. "We worked on our qualifying set-up in practice and it paid off."

Recently crowned DTM champion Bernd Schneider was the big loser. He will start from 14th after going off on his first flying lap. He improved to fifth after the session was restarted, but his quickest lap was achieved under yellows for Patrick Huisman's stranded Mercedes at Zandvoort and was thrown out by the stewards.

Mercedes has appealed against the decision, but looks unlikely to succeed, so Schneider looks set for a hard day's work tomorrow.

His team mate Peter Dumbreck was more fortunate, although it didn't seem so at the time. He was the first to encounter the oil, believed to come from a loose oil line on Laurent Aiello's Audi, and slid to a halt in the middle of the ultra-fast Scheilvak corner. He was fortunate to be missed by Bernd Maylander, who had to hurl his Mercedes on to the grass to avoid T-boning the stranded Scot.

"I didn't spin really, I just slid to a halt," said Dumbreck, who will start third. "It was the coolest slide ever! I really thought I was going to catch it even though I was on the rack stops. I had to go down the gears to first, looked up and saw Maylander coming and thought 'wooooa!'"

Dumbreck, who is battling with Audi's Aiello for second in the points standings, will start behind a front row of the yellow Audis, as Mattias Ekstrom set the second fastest time. Slightly ominously, the Audi drivers have said they will do everything they can to help Aiello's cause tomorrow, so we could see some interesting tactics come into play.

Local man Huisman (Mercedes) was fourth fastest, ahead of Aiello (who was unable to complete all his laps after losing oil) and Darren Turner. The latter was the third fastest Mercedes driver, benefiting from going out earlier than most on his new tyres.

Manuel Reuter was another to lose out with the yellow flag situation, dropping from eighth to 10th but remaining the quickest of the Opels.

"It would have been good if that had counted," he said. "I was very happy with the lap. At least I know the car's balance was good again, because this morning [when he was fourth fastest] it was perfect."

Reuter will start behind a quartet of Mercs, comprising Turner, Uwe Alzen, Marcel Fassler and David Saelens.

Tomorrow's qualification race begins at 15.22 local time (14.22 BST).

For full qualifying times, click here.