Olsen Leads Porsche 1-2 in Saturday Qualifying

Dennis Olsen secured pole position for Saturday DTM race at Spa, leading Thomas Preining in a Porsche front row lockout during a wet session.

Olsen reeled off a lap of 2:30.488 behind the wheel of the No. 94 Porsche 911 GT3 R, beating Preining’s No. 24 KÜS Team Bernhard Porsche by 0.146 seconds.

Lucas Auer ended the session third, with the No. 22 Mercedes-AMG Team Winward Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo 0.312 seconds down on Olsen’s best effort.

The fastest laps from all three drivers came only after a brief Full Course Yellow interruption to recover a stranded Kelvin van der Linde from the gravel at Pouhon.

Van der Linde, who finished the session in eighth, spun his No. 3 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II over the kerbs, requiring him to be pulled out.

Prior to the caution, reigning series champion Maximilian Goetz had set the fastest lap with a 2:30.800, which was only improved upon by Preining and later Olsen in the closing minutes.

Goetz was dropped down to fourth, ahead of the second SSR Performance Porsche of Laurens Vanthoor.

Maro Engel qualified sixth but will start tenth this afternoon thanks to a grid penalty for an incident at the last round at the Nürburgring.

He remained ahead of David Schumacher, who came in seventh ahead of Van der Linde, Felipe Fraga and Nico Mueller, who rounded out the top ten.

Rene Rast took eleventh, his last lap lost when Dev Gore brought out yellows when he spun into the gravel at Bruxelles as the checkered flag fell.

The first DTM race of the weekend kicks off at 1:30 p.m. CEST (7:30 a.m. ET).

RESULTS: Qualifying 1