BMW Team RMR driver Philipp Eng stormed to DTM race two pole position at Hockenheim, setting a lap time over four tenths faster than nearest challenger Team RMG’s Marco Wittmann.
The Austrian, who is only in his second year in DTM, set the timing screens alight in the final five minutes of the session as drivers sought to extract the maximum from their cars.
Not even the on-form Wittman could match Eng’s time of 1 minute 28.972s.
The session was the first continuous dry running of the weekend, after both Friday and Saturday’s sessions being blighted by rain.
Eng stopped at the end of pit-lane in the first qualifying session as issues from FP2 continued to plague the number 25 car. Despite the best efforts of the team, Eng was unable to set a time before struggling through the first race finishing 14th.
His BMW M4 Turbo then underwent considerable work overnight and Eng was quick to give his thanks to his team.
“I wanted it very badly today,” explained Eng, “I really wanted it for my guys because they worked non-stop into yesterday evening, with no sleep, trying to fix my car.”
Despite taking two podiums in 2018, his debut season, the 2015 Porsche Supercup champion is yet to challenge for a win in the DTM.
However, following a difficult opening race the pole-position is a step to rounding of the weekend on a positive note.
“Yesterday we had a very bad race, so I am so happy to be standing here right now.”
Race two gets underway at 13:30 CEST (12:30BST).