Björk fastest in the warm-up

Thed Björk’s Volvo C30 topped this morning warm up session with a lap of 1:55.788 that left the rest of the field nearly four tenths of a second behind.

Thus the Swedish driver partially made up for the disappointment of receiving a grid penalty after his car was found underweight in the post-qualifying technical checks.

Polestar technical director Jan Andersson explained: “It was a trivial mistake. We forgot to add the ballast that is compulsory for the cars that do not have the onboard camera. This meant that we were underweight by less than four kilos.”

Mistake apart, Andersson is happy with the performance. “We weren’t actually expected to be so good. This is a very competitive championship and you can’t hope to be on top when you join for one race meeting only. Our car is pretty fast on the straight, so it will be interesting to watch Thed during the races.”

Norbert Michelisz posted the second fastest lap in the warm up, and he was even in the position to improve his time of 1:56.179, but eventually aborted his last lap after outbraking himself at Turn 14. Fredy Barth (1:56.206), Hugo Valente (1:56.338) and Tom Coronel (1:56.358) rounded out the top five. Pepe Oriola ranked sixth and the best of the Chevrolet drivers, ahead of the RML duo of Yvan Muller and Tom Chilton.

The first of the two 13-lap races will start at 15.35 local time (8.35am CET), with the second race starting at 16.35.