Macau, Testing: Michelisz wakes Macau up

In an early morning session, WTCC drivers had the honour of opening hostilities for the Macau Grand Prix event.

Honda customers woke the whole field up by setting the pace during the 30-minute testing. Mehdi Bennani topped the time sheet for most of the session, but eventually it was Norbert Michelisz who set the fastest lap.

Bennani posted the first significant time of 2:34.377 on his first lap out of the pits; however, soon afterwards, Pepe Oriola improved to 2:34.121 on his WTCC comeback and first appearance at the wheel of a TC1 car.

Halfway through the session Bennani recovered the leadership with two consecutive quick laps of 2:30.799 and 2:29.388.

The Citroën drivers appeared to be very cautious in this first session, but Yvan Muller raised the bar, stopping the clock at 2:27.954; only Michelisz gave the impression to be on the same pace of the 2013 World Champion, posting a provisional second fastest lap of 2:37.969.

But the young Hungarian was able to do even better and jumped on top with a lap of 2:27.708 that settled the matter for good.

Freshly crowned WTCC champion José María López improved under the chequered flag and climbed to third with a lap of 2:28.533.

Oriola was the best Chevrolet driver in seventh position (2:30.123), while the fastest of the LADA cars was Rob Huff’s in 12th (2:30.952). His team-mate Michail Kozlovskiy was forced to pit for repairs in the early stages, after his car stopped on the track with a differential failure.

In the TC2T class, Franz Engstler posted the fastest lap of 2:41.323 ahead of his local team-mate Filipe de Souza; at the beginning of the session the German drivers had brushed the wall after running on a damp patch.

The WTCC field will run again at 13.55 in the first free practice session.