BMW’s Augusto Farfus took a surprise pole position in the top-30 qualifying run-off for the 2015 Nurburgring 24 Hours.
Audi had been expected to dominate with its fleet of four new R8 LMS cars, based on the forthcoming all-new R8 road car that has been developed in tandem with the Lamborghini Huracan.
BMW Z4 GT3s run by Marc VDS and Team Schubert occupied the top four places until the closing portion of the 40-minute session, in which the cars were released at 10-second intervals in an order determined by a random draw.
Each driver had two flying laps but many opted to run just one, or even none, in order to preserve the tyres that they must also use in the first stint of the race.
DTM regular Farfus set time of 8m17.394s on his second lap, securing pole for Marc VDS and co-drivers Joerg Mueller, Nick Catsburg and Dirk Adorf.
Adam Christodoulou came up just 0.947 seconds short of pole position in the Black Falcon Mercedes SLS he will share with Bernd Schneider, Andreas Simonsen and Yelmer Burman. Black Falcon won the race in 2013.
“We’ve got 24 hours to overtake one car so let’s see how it goes,” said Christodoulou.
“We’ve worked really hard on our pace in the other VLN rounds but we’re surrounded by other manufacturer entries.”
Jens Klingman was third in a Schubert BMW, 1.420s off pole position and fractionally ahead of team-mate Dirk Muller
The fastest of the R8s also helped split the BMW pack, posting the fifth quickest time in Pierre Kaffer’s hands and bumping Maxime Martin’s Marc VDS BMW to sixth.
Just under two seconds separated the top six cars.
Behind Nico Muller’s R8 LMS in seventh, Lance David Arnold made just one flying lap in the fastest of the Bentley Continental GT3s. Team-mate Guy Smith will line up 20th.
