DTM Red Bull Ring: Rast beats Cassidy to pole in tight qualifying

Red Bull duo Cassidy and Felipe Fraga appeared the favourites for pole positions at the energy drink giant’s home event in Austria, the two monopolosing the top spot for much of the 20-minute session.

It was Fraga who led the way at the halfway point with a time of 1m28.109s in his AF Corse Ferrari, while teammate Cassidy elected to stay in the pits and put all his efforts on a single run later in qualifying.

When the Kiwi finally joined the track with less than 10 minutes left in the session, he was rapid straight out of the gates, snatching the top spot from Fraga with a 1m27.884s.

Cassidy found another half a tenth on his next flying lap, which gave him the confidence to head back to the pits with 30 seconds left on the clock.

This gave Rast the opportunity to score a last-gap pole, and he duly delivered with a 1m27.698s, scoring three crucial championship points in the process.

However, in lieu of not serving an in-race penalty at Spa due to retirement - incidentally for a collision involving Cassidy - he will take the start from fourth on the grid.

This means it is Cassidy who will start the race from the head of the field, fresh off his maiden victory in Belgium a fortnight ago, with Team Rosberg’s Nico Muller joining him on the front row.

Muller jumped up to a net second late in qualifying with a 1m27.959s, leapfrogging the Abt Audi of Ricardo Feller by less than a tenth of a second.

Fraga will line up in fifth behind Rast after failing to dip below the 1m28s mark in qualifying, with Mirko Bortolotti putting his Grasser Lamborghini sixth on the grid with a time that was just 0.002s shy of Fraga.

The Italian crucially qualified 11 places ahead of championship leader Sheldon van der Linde (Schubert BMW), who never featured near the front in qualifying and will have to take the start in 17th position.

Bortolotti will be followed on the grid by a slew of Mercedes cars led by HRT’s Arjun Maini and the Winward of Lucas Auer, the latter slipping to third in the championship courtesy of the bonus points scored by Rast.

Reigning champion Maximilian Gotz was ninth for HRT, while Maro Engel rounded out the top 10 in the GruppeM AMG GT3.

Esteban Muth’s stand-in Leon Kohler put in a solid effort in qualifying to be the top BMW on the grid in 12th, five places ahead of van der Linde and seven in front of Walkenhorst teammate Marco Wittmann.

Porsche had a low-key qualifying at the Red Bull Ring, with Thomas Preining the marque’s top representative in 13th.

DTM Red Bull Ring - Qualifying results:

Cla	Nº	Driver	Car / Engine	Time	Gap
1	33	René Rast	Audi	1'27.698
2	37	Nick Cassidy	Ferrari	1'27.800	0.102
3	51	Nico Müller	Audi	1'27.959	0.261
4	7	Ricardo Feller	Audi	1'28.018	0.320
5	74	Felipe Fraga	Ferrari	1'28.056	0.358
6	63	Mirko Bortolotti	Lamborghini	1'28.058	0.360
7	36	Arjun Maini	Mercedes	1'28.175	0.477
8	22	Lucas Auer	Mercedes	1'28.239	0.541
9	1	Maximilian Götz	Mercedes	1'28.265	0.567
10	88	Maro Engel	Mercedes	1'28.290	0.592
11	4	Luca Stolz	Mercedes	1'28.363	0.665
12	10	Leon Köhler	BMW	1'28.385	0.687
13	24	Thomas Preining	Porsche	1'28.393	0.695
14	3	Kelvin van der Linde	Audi	1'28.422	0.724
15	19	Rolf Ineichen	Lamborghini	1'28.434	0.736
16	85	Clemens Schmid	Lamborghini	1'28.442	0.744
17	31	Sheldon van der Linde	BMW	1'28.492	0.794
18	94	Dennis Olsen	Porsche	1'28.533	0.835
19	11	Marco Wittmann	BMW	1'28.550	0.852
20	92	Laurens Vanthoor	Porsche	1'28.553	0.855
21	18	Maximilian Buhk	Mercedes	1'28.570	0.872
22	55	Mikaël Grenier	Mercedes	1'28.574	0.876
23	27	David Schumacher	Mercedes	1'28.628	0.930
24	25	Philipp Eng	BMW	1'28.767	1.069
25	12	Dev Gore	Audi	1'28.837	1.139
26	66	Marius Zug	Audi	1'28.920	1.222
27	6	Alessio Deledda	Lamborghini	1'28.952	1.254