The engineers from Audi, BMW and Mercedes-AMG probably didn’t get a lot of sleep in the night from Saturday to Sunday during the DTM weekend at Moscow Raceway.

There is hardly any other way to explain the step up in performance. While Marco Wittmann came just short of the 1m27s limit with his pole-winning time of 1m27.035s in first qualifying, half of the field was faster on Sunday morning.

Tom Blomqvist secured pole position for the tenth DTM race of the season after completing his fastest lap of the 3.931 kilometres long circuit with his BMW M4 DTM in 1m26.518s.

The Brit, who will be starting from the best grid position for the third time in his DTM career, will be followed by Bruno Spengler (BMW), Mattias Ekström and René Rast (both Audi) in second to fourth place from the best-placed Mercedes-AMG driver, Paul Di Resta in fifth. The other drivers to post sub-1m27s lap times were the three BMW drivers Timo Glock, Marco Wittmann and Maxime Martin as well as Audi’s Loïc Duval.

With regard to the drivers’ standings, this means for the first race of the second season half: good positions for points’ leader Rast and third-placed Ekström.

Lucas Auer, who is only four points down on Rast in second place, only ended up 14th in qualifying and now has to find an extremely good strategy to be able to end up front in the race. That promises a lot of excitement.

“I had a very good lap. With the second set of tyres, the car was really fast." Said Blomqvist

"I am very happy and I am now concentrating on the race to see what I can achieve." He added