While the first half of the ADAC GT Masters Saturday qualifying session passed off fairly quietly, the second part of the session made up for that with plenty of excitement and many changes out in front in P1 - Audi drivers Max Hofer, Patric Niederhauser and Dennis Marschall, David Jahn in the Corvette and Mercedes-AMG driver Luca Stolz - five different drivers took the lead in the closing stages until Bortolotti finally took P1 from Marschall with a time of 1:27.184 minutes to secure pole in Race 1 at 2:45 pm today. For the Lamborghini works driver from Orange1 by GRT Grasser, this was his third pole position of the season after Oschersleben and Zandvoort.

"I could jump for joy," said Bortolotti, who shares the drive in the Huracán GT3 Evo with Christian Engelhart. "My first two poles this year were in the rain, so it's great to have been successful just now in the dry. My lap was perfect. I was able to extract the maximum and had no traffic. The gaps were very close once again, but that's why we love the ADAC GT Masters. I wonder what the weather will be like in the race. You never know here at the Nürburgring, but we're well prepared."

Audi driver Dennis Marschall missed his maiden pole position by just 0.002 seconds. Still, second place means that he and partner Carrie Schreiner secured their best grid position of the season. Their HCB-Rutronik Racing team-mates, championship leaders Patric Niederhauser and Kelvin van der Linde, came home third behind them.

Guest entrants, Luca Stolz and Maro Engel, in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 from Toksport WRT took P4 from Luca Ludwig and Sebastian Asch (HB Racing) in the only Ferrari 488 GT3 in the field.

Qualifying went badly for Markus Pommer and Marvin Kirchhöfer, who are in second place in the standings. Pommer parked up the team's Corvette C7 GT3-R before the end without having posted a hot lap. "I could smell fuel, so I retired the car," said Pommer.