The Ford Mustang GT3 Evo demonstrates its qualifying strength at the Lausitzring: Arjun Maini secures the first Ford GT3 pole on Sunday, with seven brands in the top 8
In its second year with the Ford Mustang, the U.S. manufacturer can celebrate its first GT3 pole in the DTM: Arjun Maini secured the best starting position for HRT and Ford with a time of 1:19.750, after already starting from second place on Saturday. The Indian driver was 0.128 seconds faster than second-place finisher Matteo Cairoli of Emil Frey Ferrari (qualifying results).
“I really can’t thank the team enough,” said a delighted Maini, who secured the second DTM pole of his career after Spielberg in 2024—back then still in the HRT-Mercedes. “When you consider where we were last year and the progress we’ve made: now we’ve had such good qualifying sessions in a row, strong race results, and strong pace.”
Lurking in third place is Nicki Thiim, who set a qualifying record on Saturday with a time of 1:19.463. But the times were significantly slower on Sunday—possibly due to the rain the day before. Thiim, in the Comtoyou Aston Martin, was 0.157 seconds off pole. Starting from fourth place is rookie Finn Wiebelhaus, the second HRT Ford driver, as the investigation against him for blocking Nicolas Baert resulted in no penalties.
After BoP adjustment: Seven manufacturers in the top 8
Both the Ford and the Aston Martin were slowed down slightly by the first Balance of Performance (BoP) adjustment at the Lausitzring, but the result proves the BoP officials right, as seven different manufacturers are starting from the top eight positions.
Abt driver Luca Engstler (+0.243) finished fifth as the top driver in the new Lamborghini Temerario, while Thomas Preining, the strongest Porsche driver, came in sixth. The top driver for the brand with the star was Maro Engel (+0.258), who placed his Winward Mercedes in seventh, meaning he’ll start directly behind his archrival Preining following Saturday’s duel.
The top BMW driver was Marco Wittmann, who was 0.330 seconds off the pace in the Schubert BMW. “Finally starting out of the top 10 again,” said the Franconian with relief; despite very consistent results, he sits in a solid fourth place in the overall standings. Qualifying has once again rarely been the BMW M4 GT3 Evo’s strong suit this season.
“We also made a small tweak to the setup, which gained us 1.5 tenths,” “But I think that’s pretty much the maximum we could get out of it today. So I’m happy with P8. Now let’s see if we can move up a bit more in the race.”
Manthey-Porsche driver Ricardo Feller (+0.403) finished tenth, closely followed by Kelvin van der Linde (+0.412) in the Schubert-BMW and Jules Gounon (+0.414) in the Winward-Mercedes. DTM leader Lucas Auer (+0.417) also didn’t quite make it into the front group, finishing in 13th place. Saturday’s winner, Ben Dörr (+0.419), secured the 14th starting position.
McLaren driver Dörr not among the front-runners after victory
Despite a stellar Saturday and a stroke of luck during the full-course yellow phase, Dörr isn’t surprised by the qualifying result: “We knew we’d have a bit of a tough time here at the Lausitzring. The track doesn’t quite suit us, as you can see in qualifying.”
This has to do with the fact that the circuit near Klettwitz offers little grip—and the McLaren doesn’t get the tires up to temperature very easily. The heat—during qualifying, the air temperature was again 27 degrees and the track temperature 30 degrees—isn’t a disadvantage in this regard either.
Teammate Timo Glock also got off to a bad start on Sunday after the problems in practice and a disastrous Saturday that ended with a retirement because the car simply stalled: The former Formula 1 driver was 0.793 seconds off the pace and thus finished in 20th and second-to-last place.
Who Has a Tire Advantage in the Race
However, he is one of the drivers who has a tire advantage in the race with two mandatory pit stops, because his retirement on Saturday allowed Glock to save one of his three sets of tires—which every driver receives for both race days. In addition, he started Saturday’s race on rain tires, which means he also has a second new set of tires.
Grasser-Lamborghini driver Mirko Bortolotti, who finished ninth, 0.371 seconds behind, also has two sets of tires that were used only in qualifying and one completely new set at his disposal. Wiebelhaus, Engstler, and Bastian Buus can also look forward to a similar starting position.
The situation is different for Wittmann, Thiim, Feller, and Vermeulen, who have already used all three sets of slick tires and therefore find themselves at a disadvantage should the track remain dry. The race will start at 1:30 p.m. as usual.