Yvan Muller: It was a perfect lap

Yvan Muller’s pole position lap blew away the qualifying record set by Rob Huff last year, although in the new 1.6 turbocharged car, the gap to second was the biggest margin seen all year

The reigning World Champion’s first flying run was a 1:34.357, with Robert Dahlgren’s Volvo close behind on a 1:34.438. Then on the two drivers’ second run, Dahlgren improved his time to a 1:34.215 but Muller found more pace from the Chevrolet Cruze and broke into the 1:33s with a 1:33.712 to take pole position by half a second.

“I did almost a perfect lap I think,” said Muller, “which is not easy here in Oschersleben especially in these conditions where it’s a bit cold and it’s a bit complicated to keep the pressure and the temperature in the tyres.”

“The gap was very close, even with Rob (Huff) so I thought ‘okay, the second lap needs to be perfect’, because normally Rob on the second lap always improves and I was expecting the same from Robert (Dahlgren), so I was very focussed, it was a very exciting qualifying.”

Yvan Muller has now equalled Rob Huff’s tally of pole positions in the 2011 season with three each, though all of Huff’s poles were at the first three races of the season.