DTM Assen qualifying 1 report: Lawson takes pole in close session

Two-time DTM race winner Liam Lawson took pole position in qualifying for race one at Assen after posting the fastest time early in the session.

The session was disrupted by a red flag with 5 minutes remaining after the #12 Team Rosberg Audi R8 LMS GT3 driven by Dev Gore spun into the barriers. It took around 15 minutes to get the track back into order and it was Daniel Juncadella who led the pack out onto track at the restart for a busy final 5 minutes.

Philip Ellis and Kelvin van der Linde got together on the out lap, both apparently escaping unscathed but championship leader Van der Linde pitted as a precaution to change the left rear tyre that took the brunt of the contact. It wasn’t enough and the South African driver took fifth place after benefiting from Christian Klien who had his time deleted and dropped to sixteenth

Once the session was fully underway, it was Marco Wittman in the Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 who set the pace getting to within 16 thousands of a second of Lawson’s time, the closest qualifying gap of the season beating the previous best of 0.022. Lawson, one of the last to rejoin the track, reacted by setting two purple sectors in his lap before aborting the run in the knowledge that his time wasn’t going to be beaten.

Maximilian Götz in the #4 Mercedes-AMG Team HRT Mercedes-AMG GT3 took third with Mirko Bortolotti taking fourth in his DTM debut driving T3 Motorsport’s third Lamborghini Huracán GT3.

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