Salzburgring - FP1: Chevrolet cars set the pace

Following the WTCC competitors’ first real chance to experience the Salzburgring circuit at speed, it already appears the Austrian track will be a happy hunting ground for Chevrolet this weekend.

The half-hour Free Practice session saw the factory Chevrolet Cruze cars set the top three times, with the bamboo-engineering Cruze of Yokohama Trophy entrant Alex MacDowall running in fourth place for much of the session before the BMW 320 TC of Tom Coronel took a little over a tenth of a second off MacDowall’s time to end the session as the best non-Chevrolet.

Warm sunshine greeted the drivers as they headed out onto the 4.2km circuit, with only a handful of them having raced at the track in the past. Alain Menu, the only driver to take part in the Media Day at the Salzburgring on May 8th, quickly topped the timesheets, and although both Robert Huff and Yvan Muller beat Menu’s early pace, it was the Swiss driver who improved his time still further to end the session with the fastest time (1:27.008).

Muller was one of the drivers who fell foul of the right-left chicane at Turn 1 during the session, the Frenchman twice forced to take to the escape road to rejoin at T3, while Norbert Michelisz also spun at the chicane.

The session was twice red-flagged; firstly when the BMW of Stefano D’Aste went off at the entrance to T10 with less than nine minutes remaining and then when MacDowall took to the gravel at T5 while trying to avoid colliding with the rear of his team-mate Pasquale Di Sabatino’s car. The session was not restarted following this second incident.