Scheider takes Brands Hatch pole

The championship leader beat Paul di Resta to the top spot by less than one tenth of a second, while di Resta's Mercedes teammate Bruno Spengler will line up third.

"I was surprised with my time," said Scheider. "I made a mistake and had a bit of oversteer, so I am very happy that it was still enough.

"Concentration was hard here with a lot of incidents in the sessions, but we had a great car and we did a good job of finding space in the traffic."

Di Resta was pleased to be on the front row and believes he has a car to fight for victory, despite the 2008 Mercedes being heavier than the Audis this weekend.

"It's nice to be on the front row in Britain," he said. "We're positive tomorrow, we're up for the fight. We are 10 kilograms heavier, but we are in a good position to go for the win."

Audi's Martin Tomczyk completes the second row, while Jamie Green had to settle for fifth ahead of his home race.

Behind Green, Oliver Jarvis was one of the stars of the session during his first DTM weekend on home soil, as he took sixth ahead of reigning champion Mattias Ekstrom who had a gearbox problem during the session.

The Audi driver was one of two home drivers in older cars to get through to the top eight pole shootout, as Gary Paffett also got his Mercedes through an extended first qualifying segment.

Paffett had been responsible for a red flag at the start of qualifying when he went off at Druids, so officials decided to have one longer first session for all of the cars, with only the top eight going through to the final part.

He wasn't the only driver to go off there, as Katherine Legge and Alexandre Premat joined the expanding list of drivers to have problems at the same corner this weekend.

Behind Paffett, Bernd Schneider narrowly missed out on making the pole position shootout, while Mike Rockenfeller completes the top ten.

Pos Driver                Car          Time       Gap    
 1. Timo Scheider         Audi         42.084
 2. Paul di Resta         Mercedes     42.174  +0.090
 3. Bruno Spengler        Mercedes     42.256  +0.172
 4. Martin Tomczyk        Audi         42.301  +0.217
 5. Jamie Green           Mercedes     42.342  +0.258
 6. Oliver Jarvis         Audi         42.414  +0.330
 7. Mattias Ekstrom       Audi         42.420  +0.336
 8. Gary Paffett          Mercedes     42.824  +0.740
 9. Bernd Schneider       Mercedes     42.581  +0.497
10. Mike Rockenfeller     Audi         42.583  +0.499
11. Markus Winkelhock     Audi         42.615  +0.531
12. Tom Kristensen        Audi         42.631  +0.547
13. Christijan Albers     Audi         42.720  +0.636
14. Maro Engel            Mercedes     42.803  +0.719
15. Alexandre Premat      Audi         42.911  +0.827
16. Mathias Lauda         Mercedes     43.049  +0.965
17. Ralf Schumacher       Mercedes     43.186  +1.102
18. Susie Stoddart        Mercedes     43.284  +1.200
19. Katherine Legge       Audi         no time