Las Vegas GP || November 23 || 22h00 (Local time)

Losail, Qual.: Seventh WTCC pole heaven for López in Qatar

Mehdi Bennani on the first row

By Franck Drui

27 November 2015 - 14:30

José María López will start the FIA World Touring Car Championship’s first-ever night race from the DHL-presented pole position after he set the pace in qualifying for WTCC DHL Race of Qatar this afternoon.

World champion López, in a factory Citroën, was the last driver to set his lap in the Q3 showdown and excelled by outpacing his rivals Mehdi Bennani, the top Yokohama Drivers’ Trophy contender, Sébastien Loeb, Hugo Valente and Nicky Catsburg to land pole for the seventh time this season and the 14th of his WTCC career.

Honda driver Norbert Michelisz thought he’d made it into Q3 only for LADA pilot Catsburg to knock him out in a dramatic finish to Q2. Ma Qing Hua and Yvan Muller, who is in a close battle for Loeb for the runner-up spot, were also unable to make it into Q3. Michelisz’s lead over Bennani in the Yokohama Drivers’ Trophy has been trimmed to points after Bennani picked up a point for setting the category pole.

John Filippi was P10 in Qualifying Q2 and will therefore start the reverse-grid second race from top spot with Tom Coronel, who qualified ninth, alongside in a similar Chevrolet. Tiago Monteiro and Nicolas Lapierre were P11 and P12 respectively.

Gabriele Tarquini, Grégoire Demoustier, Tom Chilton, Rob Huff and Nasser Al-Attiyah were unable to progress beyond Q1 with Tarquini admitting to making “some mistakes” at Turn 4.

Pos.	Driver	Team	Car	Q1 time	Q2 time	Q3 time
1	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	2:01.421	2:01.415	2:00.947
2	Mehdi Bennani	Sebastien Loeb Racing	Citroen	2:01.742	2:01.799	2:01.311
3	Sebastien Loeb	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	2:02.915	2:01.795	2:01.525
4	Hugo Valente	Campos Racing	Chevrolet	2:02.086	2:01.654	2:01.542
5	Nicky Catsburg	LADA Sport Rosneft	Lada	2:02.239	2:01.769	2:01.833
—	----------	--------	--------	--------	---------	---------
6	Norbert Michelisz	Zengo Motorsport	Honda	2:02.404	2:02.073
7	Ma Qing Hua	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	2:01.941	2:02.194
8	Yvan Muller	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	2:02.470	2:02.573
9	Tom Coronel	ROAL Motorsport	Chevrolet	2:02.694	2:02.801
10	John Filippi	Campos Racing	Chevrolet	2:02.811	2:02.803
11	Tiago Monteiro	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	2:02.513	2:02.812
12	Nicolas Lapierre	LADA Sport Rosneft	Lada	2:02.531	2:02.877
—	----------	--------	--------	--------	---------	---------
13	Stefano D’Aste	Munnich Motorsport	Chevrolet	2:03.093
14	Gabriele Tarquini	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	2:03.247
15	Grégoire Demoustier	Craft-Bamboo Racing	Chevrolet	2:03.335
16	Tom Chilton	ROAL Motorsport	Chevrolet	2:03.362
17	Robert Huff	LADA Sport Rosneft	Lada	2:03.487
18	Nasser Al-Attiyah	Campos Racing	Chevrolet	2:03.883