Gary Paffett Takes Adria Pole

The qualifying for the DTM race at the Adria International Raceway near Venice concluded today, with Mercedes-Benz driver Gary Paffett taking the pole with a time of 1:10.471 minutes. This is the last round of the DTM season in Europe, with Paffett currently ranking third in the race for the title.

“I had a good feeling throughout the qualifying session. In the battle for the DTM title, I am only third. Of course, I will try to win the final two races, but my position depends on the results by Bruno Spengler and Paul Di Resta,” Paffett was quoted as saying by girlracer.co.uk.

The front row of the starting grid will be completed by Bruno Spengler, who was for the better part of the day considered to be the winner of the qualifying. Audi's Mattias Ekstrom will start tomorrow's race third, after losing the pole in the fourth round of qualifying.

“This shows that our performance was good,” said the Swede. “In Q4 I made no mistakes but it still wasn’t quite enough. But even from grid position three I’ve got a chance of winning – and considering that I’d already taken off my helmet after Q1 and thought I was out, P3 is definitely okay.”

The complete grid for the race at Adria tomorrow is as follows:

Gary Paffett                    Mercedes
Bruno Spengler            Mercedes
Mattias Ekstrom           Audi
Jamie Green                Mercedes
Mike Rockenfeller        Audi
Paul di Resta               Mercedes
Oliver Jarvis                  Audi
Miguel Molina               Audi
Martin Tomczyk            Audi
Markus Winkelhock     Audi
Alexandre Premat        Audi
Maro Engel                   Mercedes
Susie Stoddart             Mercedes
Ralf Schumacher         Mercedes
Timo Scheider              Audi
David Coulthard           Mercedes
Cong Fu Cheng            Mercedes
Katherine Legge          Audi