Lawson managed to hang on to his championship lead in yesterday’s race after claiming pole and, with the help of Nick Cassidy’s teamwork, snatched the final step on the podium.
He needed to qualify well again today in order to enhance his chances of scoring maximum points and Lawson did just that!
A fifth pole position for the rookie DTM driver and a spectacular 3rd position start for Nick Cassidy.
The Kiwi pair exited the garage 1st and 3rd on track but didn’t crank up the pace until the final few minutes of qualifying.
In the final 5 minutes Cassidy went fastest and became the first to break the 48s mark in the second qualifying session.
Two laps later and Lawson joined Cassidy and snuck in a 48.622 with 3 minutes left on the clock. That time was good enough for provisional pole but Lawson kept out on track and copied yesterday’s tactics, setting multiple laps fast enough for pole but still a few thousandths off his best time.
Kelvin van der Linde put up a good fight and with one and a half minutes left he inched within 4 thousandths of a second of Lawson to claim second position hence splitting the Kiwis.
The two championship contenders were pushing so hard right until the end that they both ended up slapping the wall on their final laps.
Here are how the top 10 drivers qualified:
Post qualifying interview:
Nick Cassidy:
Are you going to be giving everything to support Liam this afternoon?:
“You mean everything to win the race? No come on i’m going to win the race!”
“He’s a fast young boy he can do it himself (sarcastically)!”
How is it being here in dtm this weekend?:
“I’m having a lot of fun. It’s nice for me this weekend, I can come in and enjoy myself. I obviously don’t have anything to prove here and Liam is in a good position but yea, here enjoying the weekend.”
With all the spectators, the sunshine, what do you think of the norisring?:
“The track is great I really love this venue. Qualifying is interesting because there’s definitely some strategy to that as well. But, awesome to be back and the race will be quite fun!”
Liam lawson:
You managed to extend the lead even more.. but the race is going to be difficult, the race start will be especially crucial?:
“Yea for sure, I think after yesterday’s start there’s no doubt Kelvin will be aggressive again. So, we’ve got to be ready for that, Nick did a great job today, he’s been improving all week and i’m pretty sure he was sitting in P1 most of that session so I had to get my act together.
“Really great result it puts us in a great position for the race. I broke the car so we need to fix that but looking forward to the afternoon.”
Featured image source: youtube.com/dtm
