Hockenheim WRX: Loeb ends qualifying on top

Loeb won his race in Q3 but was pipped to fastest time by the recovering Petter Solberg, the former champion fighting back after sustaining damage in Q2 from contact with Andreas Bakkerud, causing the PSRX and Volkswagen Motorsport mechanics to work late into the evening to repair Solberg’s Polo GTi. 

He repaid the effort with the fastest time in Q3 and second-fastest in Q4 to Loeb’s team mate Timmy Hansen.

Hansen’s fastest time ensured a Team Peugeot-Hansen one-two at the top of the order, while Loeb remained first despite only setting seventh time in Q4 after a slow start. 

Solberg’s strong second day performance elevated him to fifth overall, two places behind his Swedish teammate Johan Kristoffersson.

The Portugal podium finisher chased Loeb hard in the last race of Q3 and started on the outside in Q4, where he had a close battle with points leader Mattias Ekstrom, who finished between the PSRX Volkswagen Sweden pair in fourth overall. 

Having climbed from 17th to fifth in his first DTM race of the weekend, Ekstrom jumped into his EKS Audi S1 Supercar for World RX duties and just pipped Kevin Eriksson to race victory in Q3 to also climb the order in the World RX Intermediate standings. 

The other double DTM champion on the World RX grid, Timo Scheider – who the previous evening had taken BMW’s DTM ‘Taxi’ around part of the loose section of the Hockenheim circuit, accompanied in the car by Timo Glock – came out on top of an early-race battle in Q3 with STARD teammates Janis Baumanis and Timur Timerzyanov.

Seventh in Q3, he was fifth in Q4 and climbed to sixth after the qualifying stages, two places ahead of Timerzyanov. 

Scheider’s MJP Racing colleague Kevin Eriksson also made it into the top 12, in 10th, having battled with Loeb in Q4. 

Hoonigan Racing Division team owner Ken Block made the semi-final cut too, but Andreas Bakkerud’s torrid set of qualifying races continued on Saturday evening and, for the first time since the Belgian round of World RX 12 months ago, he didn’t make the semi-finals. 

The Norwegian made a poor start in Q3 and had to pass Hungarian driver CsuCsu into the Sachs Kurve on the first lap, but surprisingly ran on used tyres when he most needed a good time.

16th heading into Q4, Bakkerud saw his hopes of advancing dashed when his Ford Focus was touched in the rear after turn one by Kevin Hansen’s Peugeot 208 and was sent spearing across the track into the side of Guy Wilks’ Polo, sending the British driver’s car off the circuit and into a near-roll.

Bakkerud fought back in his race and only just missed out on the race win, but the time set wasn’t good enough for better than 14th overall.

Privateer Robin Larsson also missed out on the semi-finals in 13th, as did Wilks, who had a weekend blighted by poor luck and set-up issues with his car.