Fraga Takes Maiden Series Pole at Norisring

Felipe Fraga took his maiden pole position in Sunday DTM qualifying at Norisring, going fastest in the second group to narrowly beat out Mirko Bortolotti.

The Brazilian reeled off a 48.717 behind the wheel of his No. 74 Red Bull AF Corse Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020.

Fraga was the fastest driver throughout the majority of the second session, although it seemed for a long time that he would not be able to clear Bortolotti’s best effort of 48.785.

That was until his final flying lap, when the Fraga improved upon the Italian’s fastest lap.

Fraga will therefore start from pole for the first time in his DTM career, while Bortolotti secured a front row start.

It is Fraga’s first time starting from pole since joining DTM, besting his previous best qualifying performance of second place at Imola.

Marco Wittmann, second in the second group with Saturday race winner Thomas Preining fourth.

By DTM’s grouped format introduced for the Norisring races, Preining was supposed to start fifth on account of his third place in the slower group.

However, Ayhancan Guven has been dropped from fourth to seventh place as the result of a three-place grid penalty for causing a collision with Lucas Auer during Saturday’s race.

Guven was one of two drivers to be penalized after the incident-filled opening race of the weekend, with Alessio Deledda dropped five places due to his part in an incident that took out Esteban Muth and Franck Perera.

Both Muth and Perera were notably absent from Sunday morning qualifying, while Deledda will start from last position.

Rene Rast and Maximilian Goetz also profited from Guven’s penalty, as the two German drivers were bumped up to fifth and sixth ahead of Guven.

Dennis Olsen will start from eighth place, with the top ten rounded out by Sheldon van der Linde and Philipp Eng.

Arjun Maini starts eleventh ahead of Ricardo Feller, Maro Engel and Lucas Auer, with Nico Mueller fifteenth.

The second DTM race of the weekend starts at 1:30 p.m. CEST (7.30 a.m. ET)