Spa DTM: Porsche locks out front row in wet qualifying

It was reigning champion Maximilian Gotz who led the 20-minute session after the opening runs, the Winward Mercedes driver lapping the 7.0km circuit in 2m30.800s on a set of wet tyres.

This put him just 0.007s ahead of the Porsche of Olsen, with teammate Lucas Auer adrift by exactly the same margin in third in Winward’s second AMG GT3.

However, while Gotz failed to improve his laptime in the second part of qualifying even as the track started to dry out, several others were able to make marginal gains to demote the German driver from the top spot on the leaderboard.

Practice pacesetter Thomas Preining was the first driver to push Gotz off the top spot and move to the front, clocking a time of 2m30.634s in the Team Bernhard 75 Porsche 911 GT3 R.

But the honour of scoring Stuttgart marque’s first pole in the DTM instead went to Olsen, who hauled his SSR Performance car to the top just seconds later with a 2m30.488s.

With Dev Gore beaching his Team Rosberg Audi at Bruxelles in the final minute and prompting a yellow flag, no one could improve significantly enough to deny Olsen from becoming the ninth different driver to score a pole this season.

This meant Preining settled for second, 0.146s off his Porsche stablemate, while Auer claimed the third spot on the grid after overhauling Gotz’s previous benchmark by just 0.121s.

Laurens Vanthoor backed up the results of his Porsche squadmates by leaping up to fifth late in qualifying in the second of the two SSR 911s.

Maro Engel was sixth-fastest in the lead GruppeM Mercedes, while David Schumacher secured his best qualifying result of the season in seventh and ensured all three cars from the Winward team were inside the top 10.

Kelvin van der Linde was Audi’s top qualifier in eighth despite prompting a FCY when he beached his Team Abt R8 LMS GT3 after clipping the wet kerbs at Pouhon.

Van der Linde’s car was dragged back to the track with the help of a service vehicle with nine minutes still to run, allowing him to finish the session and set a time of2m31.233s.

Red Bull’s Felipe Fraga qualified 0.760s off the pace in ninth in the top AF Corse-run Ferrari, while the top 10 was rounded out by Nico Muller’s Team Rosberg Audi.

Team Abt’s star driver Rene Rast qualified just behind Muller in 11th and with a strong chance of making ground on his championship rivals, who all qualified out of position.

Grasser Lamborghini’s Bortolotti ended up a distant 20th with a time that was over two seconds off the pace, while points leader Sheldon van der Linde couldn’t fare any better in 22nd in his Schubert BMW.

DTM Spa - Qualifying results:

Cla	Nº	Driver	Car / Engine	Time	Gap
1	94	Dennis Olsen	Porsche	2'30.488
2	24	Thomas Preining	Porsche	2'30.634	0.146
3	22	Lucas Auer	Mercedes	2'30.679	0.191
4	1	Maximilian Götz	Mercedes	2'30.800	0.312
5	92	Laurens Vanthoor	Porsche	2'30.923	0.435
6	88	Maro Engel	Mercedes	2'31.054	0.566
7	27	David Schumacher	Mercedes	2'31.087	0.599
8	3	Kelvin van der Linde	Audi	2'31.233	0.745
9	74	Felipe Fraga	Ferrari	2'31.248	0.760
10	51	Nico Müller	Audi	2'31.335	0.847
11	33	René Rast	Audi	2'31.521	1.033
12	37	Nick Cassidy	Ferrari	2'31.809	1.321
13	36	Arjun Maini	Mercedes	2'32.037	1.549
14	7	Ricardo Feller	Audi	2'32.095	1.607
15	4	Luca Stolz	Mercedes	2'32.247	1.759
16	18	Maximilian Buhk	Mercedes	2'32.259	1.771
17	11	Marco Wittmann	BMW	2'32.262	1.774
18	10	Esteban Muth	BMW	2'32.534	2.046
19	85	Clemens Schmid	Lamborghini	2'32.638	2.150
20	63	Mirko Bortolotti	Lamborghini	2'32.682	2.194
21	55	Mikaël Grenier	Mercedes	2'32.887	2.399
22	31	Sheldon van der Linde	BMW	2'33.138	2.650
23	25	Philipp Eng	BMW	2'33.183	2.695
24	19	Rolf Ineichen	Lamborghini	2'33.756	3.268
25	66	Marius Zug	Audi	2'33.875	3.387
26	12	Dev Gore	Audi	2'34.505	4.017
27	6	Alessio Deledda	Lamborghini	2'36.511	6.023