Qualifying: Ekstrom is the coolest

Ekstrom was third man out in the superpole session, and had to watch while Peter Dumbreck, Jean Alesi and Bernd Schneider all lost out on great opportunities to better the Swede's 1m48.389s lap.

Both Dumbreck and Schneider were more than half a second up on Ekstrom coming into the final stadium sector, and both contrived to lose the advantage. The same was true of Jean Alesi in his Mercedes, who will start third behind Dumbreck. Audi's Martin Tomczyk was fourth fastest, ahead of Schneider.

With the skies clearing and the line getting drier for the later runners, the phenomenon was all the more hard to understand. Christian Albers, just a point behind Schneider in the championship, was fourth out in super pole and had an unmemorable lap. He left himself ninth, but thanks to Schneider's over-enthusiasm late in his lap, he'll only be four places behind his rival.

Opel's Manuel Reuter was unable to do a super pole run, as he damaged his car in a head-on collision with the turn one tyre wall shortly after setting what would be seventh-best time in the briefly red-flagged practice session.

The race begins at 1300 BST tomorrow.



Matthias Ekstrom (Audi) 1m48.389s
Peter Dumbreck (Opel) 1m48.523s
Jean Alesi (Mercedes) 1m48.597
Martin Tomczyk (Audi) 1m48.613s
Bernd Schneider (Mercedes) 1m48.419s
Alain Menu (Opel) 1m49.187s
Timo Scheider (Opel) 1m49.192s
Marcel Fassler (Mercedes) 1m49.850s
Christijan Albers (Mercedes) 1m50.613s
Manuel Reuter (Opel) no time