Suzuka: Menu’s pole is worth the manufacturers’ title!

Alain Menu won his third pole position of the season, the second in a row, and gave Chevrolet the points needed to clinch a third consecutive WTCC Manufacturers’ title.

With most of the attention focusing on Tiago Monteiro and the Honda Civic on their first appearance in the World Championship, the Chevrolet team managed to steal the limelight putting in another amazing performance.

Menu and his team-mates Yvan Muller and Rob Huff monopolized the first three positions, and Alex MacDowall and his bamboo-engineering Cruze car provided the icing on the cake by qualifying in fourth. Which also meant pole position in the Yokohama Trophy for the young Englishman.

An impressive Mehdi Bennani emerged as the best of the rest in fifth, with his Proteam Racing BMW 320 TC, while Gabriele Tarquini – the fastest of the SEAT drivers – and Tom Coronel qualified sixth and seventh.

As for Monteiro, he qualified 11th after using all the new sets of tyres to win a place in Q2. However, on his last attempt in Q1, Monteiro had showed that the Civic has a potential, as he was able to set the seventh fastest lap and advance to Q2. A brilliant result considering that the Japanese car moved its first steps less than three months ago.

Stefano D’Aste and Pepe Oriola qualified tenth and ninth, meaning that they will start from the front row on the reversed grid for Race 2.

Qualifying 1

On their first lap out of the pits the Chevrolet trio secured their places in Q2: Yvan Muller’s 53.175, Alain Menu’s 53.327 and Rob Huff’s 53.365 were already good enough to advance to the final ten minutes of the qualifying session.

In spite of this, they all improved on their second attempt: Muller to 52.940, Menu to 52.984 and Huff to 53.077.

Behind them Alex MacDowall was already on top of the Yokohama trophy, fourth overall with a lap of 53.357. With Tom Coronel and Aleksei Dudukalo in fifth and sixth positions, Tiago Monteiro managed to win a place in Q2 in the dying seconds. Using his last set of new tyres, the Portuguese driver remained cool and clocked a 53.443 that promoted him from 12th to seventh and also kicked Franz Engstler out of the top-twelve.

Engstler and Norbert Michelisz were the first drivers excluded from Q2, in 13th and 14th positions. They remained off by two and four thousandths of a second respectively.

The following drivers advanced to Q2: Muller, Menu, Huff, MacDowall, Coronel, Dudukalo, Monteiro, Tarquini, O’Young, Bennani, D’Aste and Oriola.

Qualifying 2

Once again it took only one lap to the Chevrolet men for establishing the ranking on top of the qualifying session. With an amazing 52.885, Menu beat Muller’s 52.950 and Huff’s 53.885.

On the second attempt, only Huff improved to 53.054, but this did not help him to move ahead from third.

Just like in Q1, MacDowall completed the Chevrolet quartet and with a lap of 53.206 he demoted Mehdi Bennani to fifth. MacDowall’s new team-mate at bamboo-engineering, Darryl O’Young, could have been his most dangerous contender for the pole. However, after setting very fast intermediates in the first two sectors, O’Young spoiled everything with a mistake on the final turn.

Having used all his new tyres in Q1, Monteiro could not achieve any better than the 11th place and remained one second off the reversed pole position for Race 2.