Cassidy Inherits Saturday Pole After Rast Penalty

Nick Cassidy will start Saturday’s DTM race at the Red Bull Ring from pole after qualifying second, inheriting first place from Rene Rast thanks to a grid penalty for the German.

Rast posted a best lap of 1:27.698 in his No. 33 Abt Sportsline Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II to outpace Cassidy by 0.102 seconds.

However, after the two made contact in the Sunday race at Spa, stewards gave the three-time champion a three-place grid penalty to be served at the next race.

As a result, Rast drops to fourth with the No. 37 AlphaTauri AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo moving up to pole in his place.

It is Cassidy’s first pole position in the series, coming after he claimed he first race victory last time out at Spa.

The New Zealander had already leaped to the top of the session with his first lap of 1:27.884, before improving to his best lap of 1:27.800.

He looked set to end the session quickest, until Rast beat him with his last flyer at the very end of the 20-minute session.

With Rast dropping to fourth, Nico Mueller moves up to second place after qualifying third, with Ricardo Feller moving from fourth to third and sharing the second row of the grid with Rast.

Felipe Fraga, who also topped the session before Cassidy’s improvements, ended up fifth ahead4q of Mirko Bortolotti, Arjun Maini and Lucas Auer.

Maximilian Goetz took ninth, with Maro Engel rounding out the top ten.

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

RESULTS: Qualifying 1