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Schneider takes 25th career pole

Bernd Schneider took the 25th pole position of his DTM career in a thrilling climax to qualifying at Barcelona

The 44-year-old knocked championship leader Timo Scheider off the top spot in the dying seconds of the session, as several cars improved with their final laps in the crucial third segment of qualifying.

"I was confident going into the session, but I didn't expect to get pole," said Schneider, who last qualified on pole at Zandvoort in 2005.

"My problem has been doing the laptime when the tyres are new, but it wasn't a problem here because I did it on my third lap.

"That's unusual, but also something special. I was surprised though, because I didn't think the lap would be enough (for pole)."

Scheider was satisfied with second, as all three of his championship rivals will be starting behind him.

"It's not bad to be P2 behind Bernd," said the Audi driver. "Paul (di Resta), Jamie (Green) and Mattias (Ekstrom) are all behind and that is good for me, so to be on the front row is ok."

Di Resta is the closest of Scheider's challengers for tomorrow's race, as the Scot jumped up to third with his final lap. He was slightly disappointed though, as he set the fastest time of all in the second segment of the session.

"It's good to be third, but it is disappointing that I did my best time in Q2," he said. "I didn't put a lap together in Q3 though - I didn't do my job properly.

"We've got stronger over the weekend though, and I'm sure that will continue to be the case, so we'll be stronger tomorrow as well."

Last year's pole-sitter Martin Tomczyk seemed set to cause a problem for Mercedes by putting his Audi towards the front of the field, but he eventually had to settle for fourth, just ahead of Green.

Reigning champion Mattias Ekstrom is the last of the title challengers in sixth place, while newly-crowned Le Mans Series champions Mike Rockenfeller and Alexandre Premat both got themselves into the top eight shootout in their 2007-spec A4s.

Their places came at the expense of the 2008 cars of Tom Kristensen and Bruno Spengler, who will complete the top 10, with Kristensen in particular very upset with traffic that prevented him from repeating the strong form he had shown in practice this weekend.

Pos Driver               Car          Time         Gap   
 1. Bernd Schneider      Mercedes     1:07.248
 2. Timo Scheider        Audi         1:07.279  +0.031
 3. Paul di Resta        Mercedes     1:07.305  +0.057
 4. Martin Tomczyk       Audi         1:07.346  +0.098
 5. Jamie Green          Mercedes     1:07.384  +0.136
 6. Mattias Ekstrom      Audi         1:07.404  +0.156
 7. Mike Rockenfeller    Audi         1:07.494  +0.246
 8. Alexandre Premat     Audi         1:07.583  +0.335
 9. Tom Kristensen       Audi         1:07.551  +0.303
10. Bruno Spengler       Mercedes     1:07.564  +0.316
11. Oliver Jarvis        Audi         1:07.709  +0.461
12. Christijan Albers    Audi         1:07.893  +0.645
13. Gary Paffett         Mercedes     1:07.924  +0.676
14. Markus Winkelhock    Audi         1:07.929  +0.681
15. Maro Engel           Mercedes     1:08.183  +0.935
16. Mathias Lauda        Mercedes     1:08.390  +1.142
17. Ralf Schumacher      Mercedes     1:08.408  +1.160
18. Susie Stoddart       Mercedes     1:08.435  +1.187
19. Katherine Legge      Audi         1:08.846  +1.598

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