Aitken Bags Saturday Pole At Lausitzring
It’s been quite a couple of days for newly named full season IMSA GTP racer Jack Aitken, the Brit set pole position in the first qualifying session at the DEKRA Lausitzring this morning, his first pole in the DTM and the first too for the Ferrari 296 GT3 of Emil Frey Racing.
27-year-old Aitken, like many of his colleagues, waited before setting off in search of top times at the 20-minute qualifying session in the Ferrari 296 GT3, setting the best time (1:19.937) on his sixth lap. “I always really enjoy the qualifying sessions. Even better that I was able to get pole position. The season hasn’t been ideal so far, but I’m confident that we will be able to be up there at the front in the second half of the season. There are a lot of good overtaking opportunities on the Lausitzring, so it will be a challenging race for me as pole sitter.”
Trailing by just 0.054 seconds, Mirko Bortolotti in the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 of SSR Performance came second and, along with Aitken, was the only other driver to finish under the 1:20.000-minute mark. These two bonus points saw the Italian move up into second place in the overall standings. Lucas Auer of Mercedes-AMG Team Winward, in third place in the Mercedes-AMG GT3. The two Audi drivers, who are team-mates at Abt Sportsline, Kelvin van der Linde and Ricardo Feller followed in fourth and fifth place.
The first qualifying session in the second half of the DTM season at the Lausitzring started out as a tactical affair. Almost all the drivers waited quite some time before taking to the 3.478-kilometre track in summery temperatures of 25 degrees Celsius on Saturday morning. Then things really got going in the final five minutes of qualifying, top times came in one after the other and kept being beaten. Aitken was the first driver to set a time of under 1:20.000 minutes, which Bortolotti beat just a few seconds later, before the Brit finally prevailed with his best lap. The high level of performance in the DTM was demonstrated once again in this qualifying session. The top three were all within eight hundredths of a second of each other, and just eight tenths of a second separated the top 23 drivers.
Qualifying results, 1st race, DEKRA Lausitzring
1. Jack Aitken (GB/Emil Frey Racing), 1:19.937 minutes
2. Mirko Bortolotti (I/SSR Performance), +0.054 seconds
3. Lucas Auer (A/Mercedes-AMG Team Winward), +0.079 seconds
4. Kelvin van der Linde (ZA/Abt Sportsline), +0.083 seconds
5. Ricardo Feller (CH/Abt Sportsline), +0.231 seconds
Pic top copyright DTM
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