Audi Team Abt Sportsline driver Nico Mueller claims his second pole position of the 2020 season at a sunny Nurburgring. He beat two-time champion, Rene Rast, ahead of Robin Frijns.
The sun was shining for this morning’s qualifying session. Early on, reigning champion Rast was leading with a 1:47.414. Mueller then crossed the line with a 1:47.347, taking over the top spot. Rast immediately responded, improving once again, going two tenths faster. So after the first runs, it was the German Team Rosberg driver who held the provisional pole.
With six minutes left on the clock, drivers headed out for their second runs. Rast improved his own time to a 1.47.055, building a little gap to Mueller. However, with ten seconds left in the session, Mueller crossed the line and broke the 1:47 barrier – setting a flying lap of 1:46.834. Even though Rast could’ve answered and tried a second push lap, he opted against it allowing Mueller to take his second pole of the season. Rast will start from second on the grid, 0.221 seconds behind Mueller.
‘It was a very good qualifying,’ Mueller commented. ‘Finally, I felt like we managed to have a clean run also in the qualifying and feeling confident in the car to extract the maximum. The team has really done a good job all weekend long again. We put the car on the ground on Friday and it felt good and we knew what we could improve. We presumably did the right steps, as today the car felt even a little bit better. I’m happy with the start of the day but the big job is still ahead of us.’
Mueller’s teammate Robin Frijns had to settle for third today. The Dutchman has taken four pole positions so far this year and claimed his maiden victory last weekend in Assen. Though today he was a little further behind Mueller with a gap of almost six tenths. The best of the BMW’s today is Marco Wittmann in fourth, 0.659 behind the pole time.
Audi Team Phoenix’ Mike Rockenfeller will start fifth. It’s both his and his team’s home race this weekend, as the team is based near the Nurburgring. WRT’s Ferdinand Habsburg will line up alongside Rockenfeller in sixth. Sheldon van der Linde, who also took his maiden victory in the series last weekend, will start this afternoon’s race from seventh on the grid. The most experienced driver on the grid – Jamie Green – starts eighth. Completing the top ten are Loic Duval and Philipp Eng, with the latter being 1.104 off of Mueller.
Jonathan Aberdein was improving on his second run, setting a purple first sector. However, he went extremely wide at turn 10 and was therefore unable to improve. He will start from 13th on the grid, ahead of rookies Harrison Newey, Robert Kubica and Fabio Scherer.
The 9th race of the season will start at 13.30 local time (12.30 UK time)
Update: Habsburg will start from 11th on the grid after receiving a 5-place grid penalty.
