Practice report
WTCC Slovakia
Slovakia WTCC: Ekblom leads Volvo 1-2 in opening practice
Fredrik Ekblom set the pace at Slovakiaring in the first free practice session ahead of his Volvo teammate Thed Bjork, with Lada’s Nicky Catsburg third in the Vesta TC1.
Edited: Apr 16, 2016, 12:38 PM
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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
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