Forza Ferrari at the 50th ADAC TotalEnergies 24h Nürburgring: Luca Ludwig put the #26 octane126 Ferrari on pole position in top qualifying on Friday evening and secured the Glickenhaus Trophy for the fastest driver in the "Green Hell" for the first time. In 8:09.469 minutes, he was the only driver to stay under the 8:10 minute mark and thus gave his family the seventh pole position at the "Eifel Marathon". His father Klaus Ludwig is the record holder at the Ring with six poles. For Ferrari it was the second pole position after the Farnbacher team in 2011.

"Sensational! I was hoping for it. We had to rebuild the car and had a few problems yesterday. But today everything fitted. The tyre came after three corners and was then perfectly in the working window. That was an almost perfect lap," said Luca Ludwig, whose second lap of 8:10.406 minutes would also have been enough for first place on the grid. In the end, he was 1.171 seconds ahead of Brazilian Augusto Farfus in the #99 Rowe-BMW, whose time of 8:10.640 gave the team another place on the front row of the grid after pole in 2021. "Super! We had already expected to be in the leading group, but not with such a tight field. This is an indication of how exciting the race will be. I'm very happy with qualifying," said Farfus.

Third place went to Briton Jordan Pepper in the #7 Konrad Lamborghini, fourth to Christopher Haase in the #22 Car Collection Audi. Fastest Mercedes-AMG was the #12 Bilstein-Mercedes-AMG with Luca Stolz, best Porsche the #25 Huber-Porsche with Nico Menzel.

Sheldon van der Linde, Engel, Jaminet and Cairoli secure progress
Before the final showdown, four drivers had still secured their teams' last available places in the hunt for the Glickenhaus Trophy and the best grid positions in Top Qualifying 1. Sheldon van der Linde in the #98 Rowe-BMW, Maro Engel in the #4 Getspeed-Mercedes-AMG, Matthieu Jaminet in the #27 Toksport-Porsche as well as Matteo Cairoli in the #28 Dinamic-Porsche took their places and also gave one team mate each the experience of two free laps through the "Green Hell". Maro Engel was thus unable to go in pursuit of his third Glickenhaus Trophy after 2016, 2019 and 2020. "On my first lap I still had yellow flags in the Hatzenbach. Then full attack - I don't know where I could have found more time. I gave it everything and luckily it was still enough." Sheldon van der Linde set the best time of the weekend so far in 8:11.039, having also previously set the fastest lap of all three qualifying sessions in 8:14.771. "My lap was quite clean, we delivered," said the South African, who had already won both DTM races at the Lausitzring the previous weekend.