Oliver Jarvis admitted that he had expected to run strongly in qualifying at Zandvoort after securing his first pole position in the DTM.

The Briton headed the times in the Netherlands to lead a British 1-2 on the times and become the first driver to take pole using a year-old car.

Having made it through to the final stage of qualifying on a day when the 2009-spec Audi drivers struggled, Jarvis came out ahead of Gary Paffett, Bruno Spengler and Mike Rockenfeller to pick up pole and the former F3 racer admitted he was delighted with his performance.

"Wow, what a great moment!” he said, “not just for me, but also for my squad from Audi Sport Team Phoenix. We experienced two unfortunate weekends together, so we're all the more relieved by this result today.

“I want to thank everyone who made this possible. But no matter how great this feeling is now, we know that the race tomorrow will be tough and will strictly concentrate on that from now on."

Audi motorsport chief Wolfgang Ullrich was also delighted to see Jarvis on pole, although he conceded that there were questions to be answered about the performance of the 2009 machines.

"Oliver Jarvis' performance in a year-old car cannot be emphasised emphatically enough,” he said/ “He was in control of qualifying and clinched pole on the crucial lap by posting all the fastest sector times. We've always known that he's got this kind of potential – and today he impressively proved it.

“Now, we've got to get together and analyse why our current cars are not on the positions where they belong. For the race, we'll work out a strategy of how to get them as far to the front as possible. We've seen more than once in the DTM that this can be done from these grid positions."