Shanghai, FP1: Turkington tops first sessions

It did not take too much to Colin Turkington to remember how to drive a front-wheel drive car. For the first time the wheel of the yellow Chevrolet Cruze, the Ulsterman emerged as the fastest in this morning’s first free practice session.

“I ran on a qualifying set up, to get used to how the cars will look like this afternoon. In the second free practice we will go for a race set up and try a long run. I really enjoy to drive the car,” he said.

Turkington’s 1:56.019 was set in the early stages of the session and nobody was able to beat it. Rob Huff posted the second fastest time of 1:56.412, demoting Gabriele Tarquini’s SEAT (1:56.546) to third.

Alain Menu was classified fourth, only one thousandths of a second slower than Tarquini, with Yvan Muller (1:56.691) in fifth and Tom Coronel (1:56.878) in sixth.

The Spanish duo of Fernando Monje (1:57.333) and Pepe Oriola (1:57.354) ranked seventh and eighth respectively. Norbert Michelisz (1:57.360) and Tiago Monteiro (1:57.393) rounded off the top ten.

James Nash was the best of the Ford drivers in 15th position (1:57.851).

Two drivers had technical problems during the session: Fredy Barth could not hit the track at all for an electronics failure, and Pepe Oriola stopped alongside the pit wall when an oil vapour duct broke out. This forced the race control to red flag the session one minute earlier.