Hockenheim DTM: Da Costa on pole, Wittmann beats Mortara

Wittmann will start Saturday's race in fourth, surrounded by BMW stablemates, with Mortara set to fight through from eighth and the only other remaining title challenger Jamie Green down in P14.

It took a few minutes of qualifying for anyone to surpass Nico Muller's best lap of the weekend so far from FP2, Audi stablemate Mike Rockenfeller finally doing so with a 1m32.860s and Green joining him under the 1m33s margin.

Wittmann soon split the pair, but Rockenfeller went further clear with his next lap, lowering the benchmark to 1m32.716s.

But the championship leader was undeterred, stringing together two session-best sectors next time around, which, despite a slight moment in the final sector, allowed him to move to first place at 1m32.526s.

At the halfway point in the session, as drivers came back into the pits before their second runs, Wittmann headed an Audi 2-3-4-5, with title rivals Green and Mortara sat in third and fourth.

Miguel Molina, running off-sequence on a largely empty track, then snatched provisional pole with a 1m32.444s lap with four minutes to go – with da Costa quickly lowering that to 1m32.344s.

And despite track evolution, those two would remain at the front of the pack to the very end of the session.

Tom Blomqvist moved up to third in the closing stages, while a last-gasp lap from Wittmann promoted him to fourth, just 0.004s behind Blomqvist.

Maxime Martin made it a BMW 1-3-4-5 out front, followed by Rockenfeller and another BMW Augusto Farfus.

A late improvement from Mortara was enough to move him up from 15^th to eighth, with Timo Glock and Muller making up the top 10 – and Green only 14^th.

It was an entirely anonymous session for Mercedes, with Paul di Resta in P12 – less than half a second off pole – leading the marque's eight cars.

Qualifying results

Pos.	#	Driver	Car	Time	Gap	km/h
1	13	Antonio Felix da Costa	BMW M4 DTM	1'32.344		178.315
2	17	Miguel Molina	Audi RS5 DTM	1'32.444	0.100	178.122
3	31	Tom Blomqvist	BMW M4 DTM	1'32.508	0.164	177.999
4	11	Marco Wittmann	BMW M4 DTM	1'32.512	0.168	177.992
5	36	Maxime Martin	BMW M4 DTM	1'32.574	0.230	177.872
6	99	Mike Rockenfeller	Audi RS5 DTM	1'32.620	0.276	177.784
7	18	Augusto Farfus	BMW M4 DTM	1'32.631	0.287	177.763
8	48	Edoardo Mortara	Audi RS5 DTM	1'32.662	0.318	177.703
9	16	Timo Glock	BMW M4 DTM	1'32.700	0.356	177.631
10	51	Nico Müller	Audi RS5 DTM	1'32.704	0.360	177.623
11	72	René Rast	Audi RS5 DTM	1'32.726	0.382	177.581
12	3	Paul di Resta	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'32.794	0.450	177.451
13	2	Gary Paffett	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'32.884	0.540	177.279
14	53	Jamie Green	Audi RS5 DTM	1'32.908	0.564	177.233
15	10	Timo Scheider	Audi RS5 DTM	1'32.918	0.574	177.214
16	84	Maximilian Götz	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'32.922	0.578	177.206
17	8	Christian Vietoris	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'32.956	0.612	177.141
18	88	Felix Rosenqvist	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'33.018	0.674	177.023
19	100	Martin Tomczyk	BMW M4 DTM	1'33.149	0.805	176.774
20	7	Bruno Spengler	BMW M4 DTM	1'33.168	0.824	176.738
21	6	Robert Wickens	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'33.238	0.894	176.606
22	22	Lucas Auer	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'33.254	0.910	176.575
23	27	Adrien Tambay	Audi RS5 DTM	1'33.285	0.941	176.517
24	12	Daniel Juncadella	Mercedes-AMG C63 DTM	1'33.362	1.018	176.371