Things hotted up towards the end of the first 30-minute qualifying which had been relatively quiet until then for most of the session. All 33 vehicles were out on the track at the same time in the final few minutes, battling to secure the top positions on the grid. Porsche driver Christian Engelhart (SSR Performance) went ahead with a 1.38.423 and then again a little later with a hot-lap time of 1.38.261 minutes. But then, local hero Dennis Marschall demonstrated his strong form once again in his home fixture. Barely a minute before the end, the Audi driver took the top slot on the grid from Engelhart with a 1.38.203 and secured the Pirelli Pole Position Award. He received an exclusive pair of Pirelli skis for his achievement; the young German and Rutronik Racing team-mate, Carrie Schreiner had been on pole last year for the first race of the weekend.

“I never expected that,” said Marschall. “Things went really well during tests on Thursday but weren’t so good yesterday while it seemed like our team-mates were really flying. We then decided to make some major changes to setup. It was a case of suck-it-and see to a large extent, but our efforts paid off. The car was awesome. Many thanks to our mechanics for working on the car until three in the morning. I couldn’t have found a better way to reward them, for sure!”

Engelhart and Michael Ammermüller are currently in second place in the standings and likewise secured a position on the front row. Also in a Porsche, Robert Renauer and Sven Müller came home behind them on the timesheets just 86 thousandths of a second down in the 911 prepared by Precote Herberth Motorsport. Defending champions Patric Niederhauser and Kelvin van der Linde booked P4 on the grid with a very promising result in qualifying for Rutronik Racing’s home race. Albert Costa Balboa and Franck Perera finished fifth in the best-placed GRT Grasser Lamborghini. With P8, championship leaders Luca Stolz and Maro Engel from Team Toksport WRT also made it into the Top Ten in the fastest Mercedes-AMG. In the end, just one second covered 26 cars.

Today’s race starts at 13.05 CET and will be broadcast live on SPORT1. It can also be watched online as live stream at sport1.de, adac.de/motorsport and youtube.com/adac.