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Termas de Rio Hondo, FP2: Guerrieri leaves it late to go fastest again

"He has the best car on the grid with 80 kilograms less"

By Franck Drui

6 August 2016 - 17:05

Esteban Guerrieri left it late to post another session-topping performance at FIA WTCC Race of Argentina, this time going quickest of all in Free Practice 2.

Having been outgunned by his fellow Argentine Guerrieri in Free Practice 1, world champion José María López looked to have taken his turn to shine on home soil only for Guerrieri to better his lap by 0.139s with his final effort.

Afterwards, López pointed to the absence of compensation weight being carried by Guerrieri’s Campos Racing Chevrolet as being key to the WTCC’s rookie performance.

“He has the best car on the grid with 80 kilograms less so I expected this,” said factory Citroën driver López. “But he’s one of the top five drivers in Argentina and he knows this circuit well. If you took 80 kilograms from our car or 60 kilograms from the Honda we would be almost half a second quicker. But I am happy with the pace we had in front of our opponents in the championship and this is the most important thing. We hope to keep the pace because it’s looking good for us.”

Guerrieri, whose time of 1m43.247s lowered the unofficial lap record he set in Free Practice 1, said: “We are improving, which is good. We did a simulation for qualifying but I don’t know how the other guys are. But the time is good around here and we’ll keep working and keep making progress with the car. Everybody is very committed.”

Yvan Muller was third fastest in the second factory Citroën with Tom Chilton fourth in a third C-Elysée run by the privateer Sébastien Loeb Racing team. Tiago Monteiro set the fifth best time in his factory Honda Civic with team-mate Rob Huff sixth. Tom Coronel, Norbert Michelisz, James Thompson and John Filippi completed the top 10. Nicky Catsburg was P12 for LADA but team-mate Gabriele Tarquini stopped on track with a suspected mechanical failure. Robert Dahlgren was the quickest of the factory Polestar Volvo drivers in P16.

The WTCC drivers will be back on track at 15h00 local time for Qualifying.

Pos.	Driver	Team	Car	Time
1	Esteban Guerrieri	Campos Racing	Chevrolet	1:43.247
2	Jose Maria Lopez	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	1:43.386
3	Yvan Muller	Citroen Total WTCC	Citroen	1:43.567
4	Tom Chilton	Sebastien Loeb Racing	Citroen	1:43.678
5	Tiago Monteiro	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	1:43.814
6	Rob Huff	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	1:44.013
7	Tom Coronel	ROAL Motorsport	Chevrolet	1:44.062
8	Norbert Michelisz	Honda Racing Team JAS	Honda	1:44.071
9	James Thompson	Munnich Motorsport	Chevrolet	1:44.211
10	John Filippi	Campos Racing	Chevrolet	1:44.251
11	Mehdi Bennani	Sebastien Loeb Racing	Citroen	1:44.339
12	Nicky Catsburg	LADA Sport	Lada	1:44.818
13	Gabriele Tarquini	LADA Sport	Lada	1:44.932
14	Grégoire Demoustier	Sebastien Loeb Racing	Citroen	1:45.249
15	Hugo Valente	LADA Sport	Lada	1:45.713
16	Robert Dahlgren	Polestar Cyan	Volvo	1:45.845
17	Thed Bjork	Polestar Cyan	Volvo	1:46.621
18	Daniel Nagy	Zengo	Honda	-:—.---