Argentina WTCC: Newcomer Guerrieri sets pace in FP1

Behind the Argentine was Yvan Muller in second in the Citroen C-Elysee, a second slower than Guerrieri, but ahead of Honda's Norbert Michelisz.

In only the first few minutes, Guerrieri set the quickest time by an impressive margin of seven tenths from Michelisz.

With ten minutes to go, after experiencing an issue as he did a practice start at the end of the pit lane, the local hero further improved his lap time by half a second, by then Muller was already in second place.

Gabriele Tarquini managed a solid fourth, the Lada driver sitting in the top five for most of the session.

Despite struggling for pace earlier in the session, championship leader Jose Maria Lopez also improved in the last ten minutes, which brought him up to fifth ahead of Rob Huff.

James Thompson was second in the independents and seventh outright in the Munnich Motorsport Cruze, making a late improvement to finish ahead of Campos Racing regular John Filippi.

Tiago Monteiro finished ninth in his Honda, ahead of Lada's Hugo Valente, who closed the top ten a blink of an eye faster than teammate Nicky Catsburg.

The Volvos seemed to struggle in a completely unknown territory such as Termas de Rio Hondo, as Robert Dahlgren ended up 14th and Thed Bjork finished last.

There were no major incidents during the session.

FP1 results:

Cla	Driver	Chassis	Laps	Time	Gap
1	Esteban Guerrieri	Chevrolet	9	1'43.557
2	Yvan Muller	Citroen	9	1'44.571	1.014
3	Norbert Michelisz	Honda	12	1'44.595	1.038
4	Gabriele Tarquini	LADA	11	1'44.786	1.229
5	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen	9	1'44.790	1.233
6	Rob Huff	Honda	12	1'44.982	1.425
7	James Thompson	Chevrolet	12	1'45.113	1.556
8	John Filippi	Chevrolet	10	1'45.280	1.723
9	Tiago Monteiro	Honda	13	1'45.327	1.770
10	Hugo Valente	LADA	12	1'45.455	1.898
11	Nicky Catsburg	LADA	11	1'45.460	1.903
12	Tom Coronel	Chevrolet	13	1'45.469	1.912
13	Tom Chilton	Citroen	10	1'45.482	1.925
14	Robert Dahlgren	Volvo	11	1'45.568	2.011
15	Mehdi Bennani	Citroen	13	1'46.092	2.535
16	Grégoire Demoustier	Citroen	12	1'46.480	2.923
17	Daniel Nagy	Honda	8	1'47.845	4.288
18	Thed Björk	Volvo	4	1'47.974	4.417