Rast Charges to Sunday Pole at Spa

Rene Rast took pole position for the Sunday DTM race at Spa, coming out on top in a session that saw a flurry of late improvements on a drying track.

The three-time series champion set a best lap of 2:23.424 in the No. 33 Abt Sportsline Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II, beating out championship leader Sheldon van der Linde by 0.044 seconds.

Rast’s flyer came at the very end of a frantic session that saw rapid improvements from multiple drivers as track conditions changed from damp to dry, which resulted in times dropping rapidly towards the end.

The German first put himself to the top by posting a 2:24.459 in the second half, a time that at that point was already three seconds faster than a fast lap from Ricardo Feller earlier in the session.

Feller himself then put in an even quicker lap of 2:24.163 to top Rast, before Van der Linde seemed to secure pole by posting a 2:23.468 in the No. 31 Schubert Motorsport BMW M4 GT3.

Rast would once again improve on that to go quickest after the checkered flag fell, securing his second pole position of the season.

Nick Cassidy and Mikael Grenier put themselves third and fourth with late flyers, followed by Maro Engel and Maximilian Goetz.

Feller, who sat fastest in the session on three separate occasions, ended up qualifying seventh ahead of Thomas Preining and Clemens Schmid.

Lucas Auer rounded out the top ten with Kelvin van der Linde eleventh and Felipe Fraga twelfth.

Several top drivers failed to post a competitive lap time and found themselves far removed from the top ten.

Laurens Vanthoor qualified 19th, with Mirko Bortolotti 22nd one place ahead of Saturday winner Dennis Olsen, who took 23rd.

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

RESULTS: Qualifying 2