Slovakia: Michelisz claims his first pole!

Norbert Michelisz will start the first of tomorrow’s two WTCC races at the Slovakia Ring from pole position. The Hungarian driver’s BMW was the only car to break the 2:13 barrier during the two-part Qualifying session with a time of 2:12.990.

The two SEAT León WTCC cars of Aleksei Dudukalo (2:13.076) and Gabriele Tarquini
(2:13.137) completed the top three. Behind them there will be the Ford Focus of James Nash and the SUNRED León of Tiago Monteiro with Yvan Muller in the first of the factory Chevrolet Cruze cars starting from sixth on the grid.

Thanks to the reversed grid, it will be the BMW 320 TC of Stefano D’Aste that will
start Race 2 from pole position.

Qualifying 1

The majority of Qualifying 1 was dominated by the three factory Chevrolet Cruze drivers, with Yvan Muller heading his teammates Robert Huff and Alain Menu. Then, with less than four minutes of the session remaining, the SEAT León of Pepe Oriola took over three-tenths of a second off Muller’s time, with James Nash’s Ford Focus also slipping past the current Drivers’ Championship leader.

Tom Coronel narrowly missed out on making the cut for Q2; after being forced to pit with an open rear door early in the session, the BMW driver was in 13th place and on a quick lap with less than 30 seconds remaining, but Franz Engstler going off into the gravel brought out the red flags and so Coronel was denied a place in the top 12.

Going through to Q2: Oriola, Nash, Muller, Huff, Menu, Dudukalo, Monteiro, Michelisz, D’Aste, Cerqui, Tarquini and Chilton.

Qualifying 2

Norbert Michelisz in the Zengö Motorsport BMW 320 TC took his first-ever qualified pole position in the WTCC by setting a lap time of 2:12.990 – a little over 0.08 seconds ahead of another of the Yokohama Trophy competitors, Aleksei Dudukalo in the Lukoil Racing SEAT León.

In all, there will be three León cars in the top 5, with Gabriele Tarquini third and Tiago Monteiro fifth in the SUNRED car (2:13.322), just behind the Team AON Ford Focus of James Nash (2:13.317). The three factory Chevrolet drivers fared less well, with Yvan Muller qualifying in sixth place (2:13.366) ahead of Robert Huff (2:13.575) and Alain Menu in ninth place (2:13.721) just behind Pepe Oriola (2:13.684) but ahead of Stefano D’Aste (2:14.668).