Marrakech, FP2: Muller ousts Lopez

Citroën cars continued to set the pace at Marrakech’s street circuit.

After Yvan Muller topped yesterday’s testing and Sébastien Loeb this morning’s practice one, it looked it was Jose María López’s turn to be fastest in the second practice.

Midway through the session, the Argentine missed the braking point at T10, however he was able to avoid contact with the wall and in the following lap clocked a provisional fastest lap of 1:43.500.

But Muller came back. After spoiling a first try due to cutting a chicane, the reigning champion was eventually able to oust López from the top, stopping the clock at 1:43.437. Loeb was classified third with a best lap of 1:44.572.

A trio of Chevrolet cars ranked behind the Citroën trio: Tom Chilton (1:44.975) in fourth, Dušan Borković (1:45.264) in fifth and Hugo Valente (1:45.528) in sixth. They were followed by Rob Huff’s LADA (1:45.695) and Mehdi Bennani’s Honda (1:46.154). Franz Engstler continued to reign in the TC2T class ahead of Petr Fulín.

The session was red-flagged once after eight minutes because of an incident between Gabriele Tarquini and Gianni Morbidelli at T5. Tarquini’s Honda was trying to rejoin after missing the braking point and it was t-boned by Morbidelli’s Chevrolet. Both Italian drivers were sidelined for the rest of the time.

Once again James Thompson was forced to skip most of the session due to a technical issue, while Tom Coronel was only able to join in the final minutes after the ROAL Motorsport crew finished repairs following his crash in the first practice.