Slovakia WTCC: Ekblom leads Volvo 1-2 in opening practice

The session went incident-free, but lap times for Honda’s Norbert Michelisz and Lada’s Hugo Valente were disallowed, both for track limits infringements.

The Lada driver had actually jumped up to second before the stewards decided he had gone too wide at Turn 9.

As the chequered flag was waved, Catsburg stopped on track at Turn 9, after slotting in at third, triggering a yellow flag.

Just behind the top three was Gabriele Tarquini, who set the pace yesterday, confirming Lada’s strong form.

Michelisz finished fifth ahead of team-mates Rob Huff and Tiago Monteiro. Valente was eighth, with championship leader Jose Maria Lopez just behind him after a series of runs on used tyres in his Citroen.

Tom Coronel set the pace in the WTCC Trophy with tenth outright, followed closely by John Filippi, with Yvan Muller as low as 12th after working on old tyres, just like his team-mate.

WTCC returnee James Thompson massively improved on yesterday’s pace and finished behind Muller, now six tenths off Coronel’s pace.

Full FP1 results:

Pos	Driver	Car	Time/Gap
1	Fredrik Ekblom	Volvo	2m05.420
2	Thed Bjork	Volvo	0.313
3	Nicky Catsburg	Lada	0.343
4	Gabriele Tarquini	Lada	0.623
5	Norbert Michelisz	Honda	0.752
6	Rob Huff	Honda	0.937
7	Tiago Monteiro	Honda	1.183
8	Hugo Valente	Lada	1.330
9	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen	1.394
10	Tom Coronel	Chevrolet	1.443
11	John Filippi	Chevrolet	1.875
12	Yvan Muller	Citroen	1.945
13	James Thompson	Chevrolet	2.089
14	Tom Chilton	Citroen	2.273
15	Ferenc Ficza	Honda	2.503
16	Mehdi Bennani	Citroen	2.595
17	Gregoire Demoustier	Citroen	2.636

Pietro Casillo/TouringCarTimes