Rast Beats Preining to Sunday Norisring Pole

Rene Rast took pole position for the Sunday DTM race at the Norisring after he set the fastest time in the first qualifying group.

Rast steered his No. 33 BMW M4 GT3 to a best lap of 48.662 in Group B, which went out on track first after the qualifying order from Saturday was reversed.

This meant that the drivers from Group A were out on track second after they kicked off running on Saturday.

In the second session, Thomas Preining came close to improving upon Rast’s effort, setting a series of quick laps in the closing minutes.

However, while Rast watched on from the Schubert Motorsport garage, the No. 91 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R posted a time of 48.773, missing out on pole position by 0.111 seconds.

It meant that Rast secured his 25th career pole in DTM, equaling the record for most series poles set by Bernd Schneider.

It also marked the first time the three-time series champion topped a qualifying session since his switch from Audi to BMW.

Rast’s Schubert Motorsport teammate Sheldon van der Linde, who won the Saturday race, qualified third ahead of Laurin Heinrich, Ayhancan Guven and Mirko Bortolotti.

Dennis Olsen will start from seventh aboard the No. 91 Manthey EMA Porsche, ahead of Luca Stolz and Kelvin van der Linde.

Franck Perera rounds out the top ten aboard the No. 94 SSR Performance Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.

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