Engel mastered the banked curves of Zandvoort with a time of 1:35.585 in the Team MANN-FILTER Mercedes, continuing his clean sweep of sessions so far in round two of the DTM season.
Provisionally second on the grid for race one at Zandvoort is reigning DTM champion Sheldon van der Linde in the Schubert Motorsport BMW, just 0.030 back from Engel’s pole time. However, van der Linde is under investigation for blocking Engel during the session. Third on the grid is Marco Wittmam, who is 0.297 off of pole in the Project 1 BMW.
One thousandth of a second behind Wittman was SSR Performance’s Franck Perera, making the Frenchman the first Lamborghini on the grid. In fifth place after qualifying was another Lamborghini in the form of Albert Costa Balboa for Emil Frey Racing, whose time was 0.341 off of the benchmark set by pole man Engel.
In sixth was Pereara’s SSR Performance teammate Mirko Bortolotti, with the Italian lapping the Zandvoort circuit 0.349 seconds off of the fastest time. In seventh was German Jusuf Owega in the Team BWT Mercedes and in eighth place was ABT Sportline’s Kelvin van der Linde, the first of the Audis.
Ninth was the second Audi in the order, Patric Niederhauser for Tressor Orange 1 and the top ten was completed by Thomas Preining in the Manthey EMA Porsche.
It was a disastrous end to the session for championship front runners Toksport WRT. Tim Heinemann is series leader after round one in Oschersleben, but the German could only muster 22nd in the session, with his teammate (and second in the standings) Christian Engelhart a lowly 25th.
Race one at Zandvoort starts at 13:30 local time.
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