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(Motorsport-Total.com) – Fifth pole of the season for Abt-Audi driver Robin Frijns: Saturday’s winner secures best starting position in 1: 19.412 on the Nürburgring speed track (click here to see the result) and thus shortens his championship gap over DTM leader Nico Müller to just eleven points. “I’m coming!”, The Dutchman provides in ‘ran.de’ for a declaration of war against his teammate.
© ITR
Robin Frijns has already secured the fifth pole position of the season Focus
“The lap was really good. I did everything right, there was nothing else to get out of it,” says Frijns, who was almost four tenths faster than Rast the day before on his lap from pole for ‘ran.de’. “It was clear to me: if that’s not the Polish, then I respect the other. But it was good enough.”
Your goal for the race? “Get off to a good start and check out early!” The pole setter replies. Secondly, the big surprise: WRT Audi driver Ferdinand Habsburg, who already set a record in the ITR test on the short connection, secured second place 0.2 seconds behind Frijns and therefore started from the first for the first time in his career in the DTM. Line.
Habsburg: “He made the car dance”
“I gave it my all in the first lap, I put everything into it, it was very close, but I was so happy!” The Austrian enthused about ‘ran.de’. “We were finally able to use everything. I was also able to make the car dance a little more.”
Habsburg was even on pole course for a short time, but Frijns was even faster at the end. “When I saw the one for the first time, after the first lap, I knew I had to make a better one,” he says. “But unfortunately I already gave everything I could.” The joy now is enormous, “because so far it has not been the easiest season of my career. You have to enjoy moments like this. I take it very seriously.”
In third and fourth place was followed by Müller (+0.268) and Rosberg Audi driver Rene Rast (+0.335), who had little to smile about after qualifying. “I think Robin has momentum on his side at the moment, after we had our little problems there last Sunday and lost a lot of points,” said DTM leader Müller with his current losing streak after everything has gone for him. well.
The pressure for Müller is mounting
“That’s how fast it is in the DTM,” he shrugs in an interview with ‘ran.de’. “Unfortunately, we’ve been on the wrong foot a bit since yesterday, after we had to work all night. Many thanks to my mechanics who rebuilt the car after all the bumps we had yesterday,” he said. Bad luck when his colleague Jamie Green turned him around in Saturday’s race.
But he’s confident in the race: “We are fast in the race and now I’m looking forward to an exciting race with Robin and Ferdinand. For him, of course, I’m also happy that he has shown he can do it when he does it.” everything fits “.
Rast: It was played with aids to overtake, but without possibility
So Müller doesn’t have the rest starting next to him on the poster? The defending champion is satisfied with his performance, but believes that “he could have gotten another tenth”, which would have left Müller behind.
“I used DRS and Push-to-Pass on the second lap, not the first. I thought there should be more grip on the second lap. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The grip was really there on the first lap.” . And I did not use a push-to-pass “, explains to ‘ran.de’ the reason.
But Rast, who had trouble with braking balance, knows: “Robin just drove a mega lap. I couldn’t manage the time. Of course, fourth position isn’t ideal, but right now the two abbots are very, very rapid”. The difference with Müller is now 37 points in the championship. “It used to be more. It is slowly decreasing,” says Rast.
Six BMW drivers lurk behind the Audi quartet
Behind the Audi quartet, Marco Wittmann, Sheldon van der Linde, Robert Kubica, Timo Glock, Lucas Auer and Philipp Eng lurk around six BMW drivers, as 10th-ranked Jamie Green fell back five places after receiving the third warning. in the race on Saturday.
Wittmann was 0.385 seconds short of pole time. “That’s very satisfying,” says Fürth, who finished third the day before. “It has been clear to us from the last weekends that we cannot fight for pole.” However, they have “made some good steps”, even if the gap with Audi is the usual measure.
“So hope is once again in the race, where we normally look stronger. Maybe things are going in a similar direction to yesterday,” Wittmann said confidently.
Kubica achieves the best DTM qualification
Robert Kubica, who achieved seventh place in his ART-BMW and thus the best starting position of his career in the DTM, also performed well. But he doesn’t want to talk about a great performance: “It’s great when you are the fastest, but a good step forward,” said the Pole, as always, sober to ‘ran.de’.
“This weekend we have the car more or less where we want it to be for the first time, but there is still something left on every lap.” Still, you have to be “satisfied”.
The former Formula 1 driver is now looking forward to a good race, for which the improved pit stops give him confidence. “We weren’t the fastest yesterday, but I think it was at least our fastest pit stop in a race so far,” he says. “There is still a long way to go. But it is improving.”
