Dienst went to the top of the timesheets towards the middle of the session and stayed there until the end. With a time of 1:23.220 minutes, the ex-ADAC Formula 4 champion was only 53 thousandths of a second faster than the second fastest. "We set our sights high before the start of the season but never expected to be on pole straightaway," said Dienst, who shares the Mercedes-AMG with series newcomer, Aidan Read. "Overtaking isn't easy at Oschersleben. Of course, when you start out from P1 on the grid, then that's where you want to finish. The whole team really deserve this pole after working practically without a break these past few days."

Audi driver Mattia Drudi, who is also new to the series and is partnered with Florian Spengler, was narrowly beaten in the battle for first place on the grid but was nevertheless satisfied: "I've made a great start in this strong series," said the Italian driver from Team EFP Car Collection by Tece.

Third place went to the Audi R8 LMS of Patric Niederhauser and ex-champion Kelvin van der Linde fielded by series newcomers, HCB-Rutronik Racing, who missed best time by 0.175 seconds. P4 went to the RWT Corvette of David Jahn and Sven Barth, who repeated their good showing from free practice, in which Jahn posted best time.

Fellow Corvette drivers, Markus Pommer and Marvin Kirchhöfer, who were only seven thousandths of a second slower in Callaway Competition's sister car, completed the Top Five.

This first qualifying session amply demonstrated the highly competitive nature of the ADAC GT Masters field, as just one second covered 19 cars in all.

The first race of the season will start at 1.00 pm. SPORT1 will broadcast the race live and in full. Racing can also be watched as livestream at sport1.de, adac.de/motorsport and youtube.com/adac.