Vermeulen claims his first pole position in the DTM at Sachsenring

Perfect timing from Thierry Vermeulen. With time running out in the second qualifying session on Sunday morning, the Ferrari driver from Emil Frey Racing set the fastest time of 1:17.311 minutes to secure pole position for the first time in his DTM career. The Dutchman was just 0.008 seconds faster than Kelvin van der Linde, who had topped the timing sheet up to that point.

“It is always difficult in qualifying to get the tyre into the ideal temperature range at exactly the right time for a flying lap. After Jack Aitken’s pole position on Saturday, it is great for our team that I was able to follow suit for race two. The Sachsenring was already one of my favourite circuits – even more so now,” said the 22-year-old.

Starting alongside Vermeulen on the front row of the grid will be Kelvin van der Linde from the Abt Sportsline team, who is well positioned to reclaim the championship lead. Luca Stolz was third in a Mercedes-AMG GT3, while Vermeulen’s team-mate and Saturday’s winner Jack Aitken was fourth fastest. The best of the Lamborghini drivers was Luca Engstler from Lamborghini Team Liqui Moly by GRT in fifth. Championship leader Mirko Bortolotti from SSR Performance had to settle for eleventh place.

A number of drivers headed onto the 3.645-kilometre track early in Sunday morning’s qualifying, and soon set fast lap times. However, the very best laps came in the final quarter of the 20-minute session. Stolz took the lead with roughly two minutes remaining, only to be replaced at the top of the timing sheet by Kelvin van der Linde shortly after. The Audi driver looked set to secure pole, until Vermeulen came up trumps just before the end of the session. The time differences throughout the field were extremely small, with just 0.9 seconds separating the first driver from the last.

Results are HERE