René Rast took pole position in the DTM at Imola this morning having dominated the session from start to finish. Nico Müller took P2 and Thomas Preining took third place. The result means that there has now been a different pole sitter in each of the five races so far.
DTM IMOLA | ARCHIVE | QUALIFYING 1 REPORT | RACE 1 REPORT
Qualifying for race one saw Rast set the early pace holding first place at the half way point just ahead of Kelvin van der Linde by 0.127 seconds with the top 15 covered by 1 second. Clemens Schmid was in third place despite have a lap deleted and completing minimal running in Friday’s practise sessions.
As the second half of the session got underway there was little movement in the top places until the final minute when Schmid took the top spot. A spin from Kelvin van der Linde in the final seconds left everyone holding their breath in case the session was stopped but he got the car underway himself. Despite a solid recovery lap which looked like he would be taking a top 3 position a poor last sector saw him claim P7.
Mirko Bortolotti leaped from the bottom of the table to P2 with a single flying lap but it was enough as nearly everyone in the top 10 seemed to make their final lap the quickest so the Italian tumbled down the order in the final seconds to finish in P7.
Race 1 of the weekend at Imola takes place at 13:30 CET.
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