Audi Sport driver Dries Vanthoor took pole position for Sunday’s ADAC GT Masters race in Zandvoort.

It was exciting again in the end: with eight minutes remaining, qualifying was suspended to allow the recovery of Raffaele Marciello’s (Mann-Filter Team Landgraf – HTP/WWR) stranded Mercedes-AMG. When the action resumed, leader Vanthoor remained in the garage, opting to rely on his fastest time of 1:33.931 minutes. When Lamborghini works driver Franck Perera started his final lap, shortly before the end of the session, he certainly made Team WRT sit up and take notice. Perera was on a flying lap, but came up just short. The Frenchman narrowly missed out on pole position by just 0.030 seconds.

“After such a good start to the season, our goal here was definitely to score a lot of points,” said Vanthoor. “We had a good race yesterday, with fifth point. Pole position means we are now ideally-positioned for race two. My lap was good, and it could possibly have been even better. However, the tyres were so worn after two or three fast laps that there is nothing more you can do. This is why I did not come out again after the interruption. It was a weird feeling watching, but we had done enough. Two years ago, I won here with Ricardo Feller. It would be great to do the same this year with Charles Weerts.” This was Audi’s third pole position in a row in the German GT Championship, and Vanthoor’s third in the series. As a reward for his efforts, the Belgian received an exclusive pair of headphones from Pirelli.

Franck Perera and his partner Rolf Ineichen had to settle for second place. Behind them, the gaps were similarly small. Albert Costa Balboa and Mirko Bortollotti in third place were just 0.88 seconds slower than their GRT Grasser team-mates. Maximilian Buhk and Raffaele Marciello recovered from mistake to secure fourth place, just 0.186 seconds off the pole time.

Marvin Kirchhöfer and Jeffrey Schmidt put their Corvette C7 GT3-R fifth on the grid for Callaway Competition, while championship leaders Michael Ammermüller/Mathieu Jaminet (SSR Performance) start the sixth race of the season from 15th.

Race five of this season’s ADAC GT Masters gets underway at 16:30 today and can be watched via livestream on motorsport.tv and adac.de/motorsport.