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Paul Ricard, Qual.: López quickest at WTCC opener in France

The Citroën driver set a time of 1m28.950s

By Franck Drui

2 April 2016 - 15:05

José María López got his pursuit of a third FIA World Touring Car Championship title off to a fine start by triumphing in qualifying for the WTCC JVCKENWOOD Race of France.

The Citroën driver set a time of 1m28.950s in the one-lap shootout of Q3, putting him 0. 263 seconds ahead of Honda’s Tiago Monteiro.

As the quickest driver in Q2, López’s team-mate Yvan Muller was the last driver to run in Q3 but the Frenchman ended up third.

Tom Coronel made it to Q3 in his RML-built Cruze and will line up fourth on the grid for the second race of the weekend even though he aborted his Q3 attempted. Fifth will be Nicky Catsburg, who was unable to make it out into Q3 in his LADA.

Thed Björk came close to getting Polestar into Q3 at the start of their first maiden full-time WTCC campaign. He had to make do with sixth but still made it five different cars in the top six in Q2. Norbert Michelisz was seventh for Honda in front of Citroën man Mehdi Bennani, the other Polestar-entered Volvo driver Fredrik Ekblom and new Honda signing Rob Huff. LADA pair Hugo Valente and Gabriele Tarquini will share row six on the grid for both of Sunday’s races.

Pos.	Driver	Team	Car	Q1 time	Q2 time	Q3 time
1	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	1:29.345	1:29.434	1:28.950
2	Tiago Monteiro	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	1:29.766	1:29.550	1:29.213
3	Yvan Muller	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	1:29.765	1:29.263	1:29.262
4	Tom Coronel	ROAL Motorsport	Chevrolet	1:29.991	1:29.625	-:—.---
5	Nicky Catsburg	LADA Sport	Lada	1:29.457	1:29.669	-:—.---
—	----------	--------	--------	--------	---------	---------
6	Thed Bjork	Polestar Cyan	Volvo	1:29.789	1:29.733
7	Norbert Michelisz	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	1:30.208	1:29.958
8	Mehdi Bennani	Sebastien Loeb Racing	Citroen	1:29.967	1:30.021
9	Fredrik Ekblom	Polestar Cyan	Volvo	1:30.109	1:30.221
10	Rob Huff	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	1:30.010	1:30.576
11	Hugo Valente	LADA Sport	Lada	1:30.194	1:30.612
12	Gabriele Tarquini	LADA Sport	Lada	1:29.900	1:30.875
—	----------	--------	--------	--------	---------	---------
13	Tom Chilton	Sebastien Loeb Racing	Citroen	1:30.315
14	Grégoire Demoustier	Sebastien Loeb Racing	Citroen	1:30.620
15	John Filippi	Campos Racing	Chevrolet	1:30.985
16	Rene Munnich	Munnich Motorsport	Chevrolet	1:31.749
17	Ferenc Ficza	Zengo	Honda	1:44.836
18	Daniel Nagy	Zengo	Honda	-:—.---