Timo Scheider underlined Audi's superiority as the 2008 DTM campaign gets into gear at Hockenheim this weekend, by storming to the top spot on the starting grid with a new lap record around the Baden-Württemberg circuit.
Indeed, Audi occupy five of the top eight positions, as pre-season testing star Scheider took two tenths of a second off Tom Kristensen's pole-winning time from the 2007 finale at the same track to seal the third pole of his DTM career. Defending champion Mattias Ekström – who won this race twelve months ago and paced Q1 – will begin alongside Scheider on the front row, just over a tenth of a second further back, with an all-Mercedes row two as the three-pointed star finally showed its true hand for the first time when the qualifying session got underway.
2007 series runner-up Bruno Spengler and newly-promoted AMG star Paul di Resta were both four tenths shy of the pole-winning time, and ahead of Tom Kristensen and Jamie Green, the former having taken the top spot in qualifying at Hockenheim last October and the latter having taken the chequered flag first in the race for only his second DTM victory.
Martin Tomczyk will begin the curtain-raiser a somewhat disappointed seventh, with Oliver Jarvis achieving his ambition of a top ten start in eighth, the Briton impressing once more as he proved to be the highest-placed driver in a year-old car and ahead of none other than five-time DTM king Bernd Schneider in ninth, the German the only driver of 2008-spec machinery not to make it through into the final knock-out stage.
![Timo Scheider - Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline [pic credit: DTM Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/349775.jpg)
