Slovakia WTCC: Tarquini puts Lada on top in testing

Behind the Lada driver was Honda’s Norbert Michelisz, while Tarqunini's teammate Nicky Catsburg completed the top three.

Michelisz headed the timesheet ahead of teammate Tiago Monteiro, with Tarquini third and Rob Huff at the start of the session.

The Italian jumped to the lead, which was then beaten by Cyan Racing Volvos' with Fredrik Ekblom going quickest before being beaten by teammate Thed Bjork.

In the dying moments of the session Tarquini eventually clocked an unbeatable lap time, with Michelisz not too far at 0.2s and Catsburg a further tenth shy of his team-mate.

Bjork’s time was enough to leave him in fourth ahead of Jose Maria Lopez’s Citroen C-Elysee, the double champion only setting a handful of competitive lap times.

Monteiro finished sixth ahead of Hugo Valente, who confirmed Lada’s strong form in the session.

Ekblom was eighth ahead of Honda’s Huff, with John Filippi completing the top ten for Campos Racing in his Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1.

Despite spending some time in the top five, Yvan Muller eventually finished outside the top ten in eleventh ahead of ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel.

WTCC returnee James Thompson went no further than 16th in his All-inkl.com Cruze, which was his first outing in a TC1 car since last year.

Full FP0 results:

Pos	Driver	Car	Time/Gap
1	Gabriele Tarquini	Lada	2m04.956s
2	Norbert Michelisz	Honda	0.211
3	Nicky Catsburg	Lada	0.316
4	Thed Bjork	Volvo	0.326
5	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen	0.338
6	Tiago Monteiro	Honda	0.472
7	Hugo Valente	Lada	0.724
8	Fredrik Ekblom	Volvo	0.965
9	Rob Huff	Honda	1.163
10	John Filippi	Chevrolet	1.180
11	Yvan Muller	Citroen	1.241
12	Tom Coronel	Chevrolet	1.610
13	Tom Chilton	Citroen	1.806
14	Mehdi Bennani	Citroen	2.161
15	Gregoire Demoustier	Citroen	2.684
16	James Thompson	Chevrolet	2.733
17	Ferenc Ficza	Honda	9.138

Pietro Casillo/TouringCarTimes