Mortara Leads the Pole at the Red Bull Ring

The DTM went to Austria this week to the recently refurbished Red Bull Ring, formerly the A-1 Ring and originally the Österreichring. Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz bought the track in January 2005, and it sat basically unused until Mateschitz began a €70m refurbishment in 2008. Last year, DTM returned to the track. 

The Red Bull Ring in its current layout is a 4.326km (2.688m) course with eight corners. Situated in the town of Spielberg, Styria, in central Austria. Three of the corners are sharp rights after long, fast corners that allow for lots of passing opportunities. There are also many elevation changes over the entire track. 

MercedesMercedes-BenzGermany, 1924 > present197 models
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driver for the HWA Team Jaime Green was fastest in the first qualifying session; he was followed by BMWBMWGermany, 1918 > present87 models
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Team RMG driver Martin Tomczyk and AudiAudiGermany, 1909 > present83 models
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Phoenix Racing team driver Alfred Molina.

In the second session the fastest drivers were Mercedes HWA Team driver Gary Paffett, Tomczyk and BMW Team Schnitzer driver Dirk Wener. In the second session, Augusto Farfus and Bruno Spengler set the same time of 1:26.068, but because Spengler set his time first, he was carried over to the next session. 

Mattias Ekstöm for Audi Abt Sportline, Edoardo Mortara for Audi Team Rosberg and Martin Tomczyk for BMW Team RMG were the fastest in the third session, and along with Gary Paffett for Mercedes HWA Team, they moved to the final hot lap qualifying session. 

All four top drivers challenged for the pole, but in the end Mortara took the top spot. 

The track appears to favor the Audi A5 DTMAudi A5 DTMGermany, 2012 > present12 photos
and BMW M3 DTMBMW M3 DTMGermany, 2012 > present4 photos
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over the C-Class DTMMercedes-Benz DTM ChallengerGermany, 2011 > present2 photos
. Audi has three cars in the top 10 and BMW has four.