Hockenheim DTM: Adrien Tambay takes maiden pole with Audi

The Abt Audi driver did enough to comfortably progress through the first two legs of qualifying, before storming to pole with a 1m32.272s best.

He did have to survive a late scare, though. Rookie Antonio Felix da Costa briefly popped up on top of the times inside the last minute, although the MTEK BMW driver's time was quickly deleted as he was judged to have run wide at the first corner.

Da Costa did manage to get another lap in, grabbing third on the grid, behind RMG BMW's Marco Wittmann - only for this lap to later be disallowed too.

Bruno Spengler made it three BMWs in the top four in the Schnitzer M4, ahead of the Abt Audi trio of Mattias Ekstrom, Miguel Molina and Edoardo Mortara.

Martin Tomzcyk, Timo Glock and Timo Scheider rounded out the top 10, while reigning champion and Scheider's team-mate Mike Rockenfeller qualified 11th.

For Mercedes, the session could not have gone much worse. The five cars tipped out of the session in Q1 were all Mercedes, with Paul di Resta, Dani Juncadella, Robert Wickens, Christian Vietoris and Vitaly Petrov holding up the bottom of the grid.

The HWA pairing of Gary Paffett and Pascal Wehrlein did manage to progress into the second session, but could still manage just 15th and 16th respectively on what was a disappointing day for the Three-Pointed Star.

Pos  Driver                  Team/Car        Time       Gap
 1.  Adrien Tambay           Abt Audi        1m32.272s
 2.  Marco Wittmann          RMG BMW         1m32.419s  +0.147s
 3.  Bruno Spengler          Schnitzer BMW   1m32.600s  +0.328s
 4.  Antonio Felix da Costa  MTEK BMW        1m32.608s  +0.336s
 5.  Mattias Ekstrom         Abt Audi        1m32.624s  +0.352s
 6.  Miguel Molina           Abt Audi        1m32.787s  +0.515s
 7.  Edoardo Mortara         Abt Audi        1m32.898s  +0.626s
 8.  Martin Tomczyk          Schnitzer BMW   1m33.113s  +0.841s
 9.  Timo Glock              MTEK BMW        1m32.603s  Q2
10.  Timo Scheider           Phoenix Audi    1m32.706s  Q2
11.  Mike Rockenfeller       Phoenix Audi    1m32.717s  Q2
12.  Augusto Farfus          RBM BMW         1m32.739s  Q2
13.  Nico Muller             Rosberg Audi    1m32.756s  Q2
14.  Maxime Martin           RMG BMW         1m32.792s  Q2
15.  Gary Paffett            HWA Mercedes    1m32.834s  Q2
16.  Pascal Wehrlein         HWA Mercedes    1m32.840s  Q2
17.  Joey Hand               RBM BMW         1m32.885s  Q1
18.  Jamie Green             Rosberg Audi    1m32.986s  Q1
19.  Paul di Resta           HWA Mercedes    1m33.639s  Q1
20.  Daniel Juncadella       Mucke Mercedes  1m33.746s  Q1
21.  Robert Wickens          HWA Mercedes    1m33.875s  Q1
22.  Christian Vietoris      HWA Mercedes    1m34.242s  Q1
23.  Vitaly Petrov           Mucke Mercedes  1m34.367s  Q1