Monza, FP2 : Chevrolet dictate the pace

Four Chevrolet cars topped the time sheet in the second free practice with Yvan Muller emerging as the fastest, followed by Rob Huff, Alain Menu and bamboo-engineering Darryl O’Young, the best of the Yokohama Trophy.

Muller set the session’s fastest time on his first flying lap; he drove his Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T around the Monza circuit in an impressive 1:58.540 and inflicted a half-a-second gap to Huff who posted his best time at mid-session with a lap of 1:59.003. Menu was third fastest (1:59.408) ahead of O’Young (1:59.551).

Tiago Monteiro was the best of the rest and also the only other driver to go under the 2-minute mark; he clocked a 1:59.813 to rank fifth before Gabriele Tarquini (2:00.106) and Kristian Poulsen (2:00.432) who was again the best BMW man. Robert Dahlgren and his Volvo C30 posted the 13th fastest lap of 2:02.191.

Marchy Lee and Mehdi Bennani were soon out of contention as both had incidents at Lesmo. Lee lost his car on the outer kerb and hit the barrier on the inside, while Bennani spun off and remained stranded in the gravel trap.

Ibrahim Okyay performed a perfect 360-degree spin at Ascari, but managed to avoid the barriers and rejoined.