Paul Ricard WTCC: Lopez leads wet test session

The Citroen Racing driver led teammate Yvan Muller by just under half a second, with Norbert Michelisz, now in a factory-run Honda Civic, their closest threat.

The session started wet and stayed that way throughout, with consistent light rain hitting the circuit in the south of France.

The Citroens were quick to take the lead in the session, with Muller and Lopez setting times in the 1m44s right at the start.

The times behind the two works Citroens swapped hands throughout the session, with Michelisz putting in a last-minute flyer to depose the Sebastien Loeb Racing-run Citroen of Mehdi Bennani, who would be the fastest classified of the independent drivers.

Bennani was just ahead of his new teammate Tom Chilton, while Tom Coronel was the fastest of the Chevrolet RML drivers in sixth, just over a second off of Lopez’s pace.

The new Polestar Volvos struggled in the session, with Fredrik Ekblom the fastest in 14th, while the best placed Lada was that of Nicky Catsburg in seventh.

Only 16 cars took part in the session, with the two Zengo Hondas of Daniel Nagy and Ferenc Ficza sitting out the test.

Test results:

Pos.	Driver	Car	Time/Gap
1	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen	1m43.621s
2	Yvan Muller	Citroen	0.476s
3	Norbert Michelisz	Honda	0.648s
4	Mehdi Bennani	Citroen	0.749s
5	Tom Chilton	Citroen	0.772s
6	Tom Coronel	Chevrolet	1.360s
7	Nicky Catsburg	Lada	1.697s
8	Tiago Monteiro	Honda	1.779s
9	Gabriele Tarquini	Lada	1.797s
10	Gregoire Demoustier	Citroen	2.251s
11	Hugo Valente	Lada	3.229s
12	Rob Huff	Honda	3.584s
13	John Filippi	Chevrolet	4.400s
14	Thed Bjork	Volvo	5.945s
15	Fredrik Ekblom	Volvo	6.915s
16	Rene Munnich	Chevrolet	8.743s