Audi Sport Team Abt's Tom Kristensen set the pace in a wet qualifying at the Nurburgring on Saturday, although proceedings were extremely tricky due to heavy rain.
Kristensen, who went into qualifying having set the pace in free practice this afternoon, was quickest in both Q1 and Q2. However, in the end the times in qualifying 2 were academic, as the session was stopped prematurely when Mike Rockenfeller crashed into the barriers at the first corner and brought out the red flags around 6 minutes in.
Officials initially delayed Q3, but with conditions deemed too wet and too dangerous to re-start, the third session was eventually canned altogether and under the regulations - article 48.5 - the grid was set from the results of the first heat.
Kristensen thus edged out Rockenfeller, who ironically will start second, despite his off, by 0.149 seconds.
Martin Tomczyk meanwhile will line-up third for the seventh round in this year's DTM, giving Audi a 1-2-3, with Gary Paffett fourth - and the best of the Mercedes drivers.
Mattias Ekstrom and Bernd Schneider came in fifth and sixth, the former now looking to further close the gap to Timo Scheider, who is 5 points ahead in the race for the 2008 DTM drivers' title.
Scheider had to settle for P9 in Q2, with
Ralf Schumacher and Maro Engel taking seventh and eighth. Ralf incidentally pulled off his best qualifying result of the season.
Alexandre Premat completed the top ten with Markus Winkelhock, Paul di Resta, Jamie Green and Mathias Lauda coming in eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth respectively.
Susie Stoddart, who just failed to make it through to the aborted Q2, will start 15th, with Bruno Spengler a very disappointing 16th and Christijan Albers 17th. Olivier Jarvis will line-up 18th, just in front of Katherine Legge, having gone off at the same place as Rockenfeller, but earlier on. His car suffered heavy front damage in the incident.
To see the full qualifying times
click here.
![Tom Kristensen - Audi Sport Team Abt A4 [pic credit: DTM Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/464734.jpg)
