Partnered by Patric Niederhauser, 24-year-old van der Linde took his first pole of the year for Rutronik Racing with a time of 1.27.576 minutes. He also secured the Pirelli Pole Position Award sponsored by Pirelli for the first time this weekend. He was presented with an exclusive Montblanc suitcase to reward him for setting best time.

Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts (Team WRT) in second place will also start the race from the front row in their Audi. With a 1.27.759, Vanthoor was 0.183 seconds slower than van der Linde. Third place went to the only Corvette drivers in the field, Jeffrey Schmidt and Markus Pommer (Callaway Competition). The Top Five was completed by another Audi pairing from Team WRT with Mirko Bortolotti/Rolf Ineichen and Robert Renauer/Sven Müller (Precote Herberth Motorsport) in the quickest Porsche 911 GT3 R.

Jordan Pepper (T3-HRT-Motortsport) had been on pole initially but was excluded from the classification after qualifying for running his Bentley with too much boost. However, he will still be allowed to start the race (at 13:10 CEST) from the rear of the field along with team-mate Constantin Schöll.