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Adrien Tambay tops Hockenheim DTM qualifying

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Audi’s Adrien Tambay took his maiden DTM career pole in the first qualifying session of the 2014 DTM season at Hockenheim.

The French driver, now in his third DTM year set a quickest time of 1m32.272, to top the timing sheets and take the first DTM pole of his career by 0.0147 seconds ahead of the BMW pairing of Marco Wittmann and 2012 DTM champion Bruno Spengler.

DTM rookie Antonio Felix da Costa originally rounded out the top-three in his BMW M4, but was judged to have run wide at the first corner. He will now line up fourth alongside double DTM champion Mattias Ekström.

The Abt Audi pairing of Miguel Molina and Edoardo Mortara finished sixth and seventh.

Martin Tomczyk was eighth in his Schnitzer BMW.

The 2013 Hockenheim DTM season finale winner, Timo Glock, was 9th in his BMW M4 DTM ahead of the Phoenix Audi pairing of Timo Scheider and 2013 DTM champion, Mike Rockenfeller.

Augusto Farfus was 12th, ahead of DTM rookies, Nico Muller and Maxime Martin who will line up 13th and 14th on their DTM debut.

After a difficult practice session this morning, Mercedes’ woes continued in qualifying. The 2005 DTM champion Gary Paffett and Pascal Wehrlein made it through to Q2, but will line up 15th and 16th respectively. DTM and Mercedes returnee Paul di Resta qualified 19th, and Dani Juncadella, Robert Wickens, and Christian Vietoris occupied positions 20 to 21.

Vitaly Petrov also had a difficult DTM qualifying debut after the Russian qualified 22nd and last in his AMG liveried Mercedes C Coupe.