Zandvoort DTM: Mike Rockenfeller grabs pole

The Audi driver was not quickest in either Q1 or Q2, saving his best lap of the session for when it mattered in Q3 with a 1m30.713, the fastest ever DTM pole position at the Dutch circuit.

"It feels great, of course," said Rockenfeller. "We knew it was going to be close, it's really tough this championship, therefore when you're on pole you can be really proud.

"I was quite ill the last few days with my stomach, so it feels good to be here, and to be on pole."

The pole position lap record's previous owner Marco Wittmann finished the session second, missing out on pole by just 0.026 seconds, while Audi's Edoardo Mortara was third, also within a tenth of pole.

Mattias Ekstrom, Jamie Green and Nico Muller made it five Audis in the top six by locking out positions four, five and six respectively.

Pascal Wehrlein, the only Mercedes driver to make it into Q3, qualified seventh, but did manage to set his own record along the way; his Q2 time of 1m30.449s is now the fastest ever lap set during a DTM qualifying session at Zandvoort.

"We were struggling a bit in free practice, so I was a bit surprised I was so quick in Q1 and Q2," Wehrlein said. "In Q3 it didn't come together."

Martin Tomczyk qualified eighth, last of the drivers to make it through to Q3, while his fellow BMW driver Joey Hand missed out on a Q3 spot by just 0.06s and will therefore start ninth.

Meanwhile, Antonio Felix da Costa's poor run of form continued, the Portuguese driver missing out on Q2 by just over a tenth of a second.

His BMW team-mate Augusto Farfus also went out in Q1, qualifying 20th, ahead of the Mercedes trio of Robert Wickens, Daniel Juncadella and Vitaly Petrov.

For Petrov, qualifying last was a predictable end to a difficult day, the Russian having missed all but the first six minutes of the two hours of practice after an FP1 crash. He finished Q1 1.493s behind the cut-off time for Q2.