Marco Wittmann secured his second DTM pole position of the season at Zolder, narrowly beating Audi Sport Team Rosberg’s René Rast. The BMW Team RMG driver was quick to thank his team for set up changes that helped him to pole.

The current championship leader set a time of 1 minute 21.307 seconds, the fastest time of the weekend so far, knocking Rast from pole by 0.042 seconds.

Wittmann’s time remained unchallenged for the rest of the qualifying session, despite improving track conditions.

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“It is a great day for me already,” Wittmann remarked, “we made quite a few changes to the car and they all worked well.

“I’m really happy with the guys, all my mechanics and engineers, they did a perfect job today.

And the lap was also great!”

The DTM series is returning to Zolder for the first time since 2002, and the tight 4km Belgian circuit is very different in its character to Hockenheim, which hosted the opening round.

As such, qualifying has an increased importance, with only two real overtaking opportunities round the lap.

“Here at Zolder it’s difficult to overtake,” explained Wittmann, “so more important actually is the start, to have a good getaway.

“For me on Saturday [at Hockenheim] it worked really well, on Sunday I had quite a bad start.

“So I have to try to make it as on Saturday.”

Race one at gets underway at 13:30 CEST (12:30 BST).