Thompson’s Lada tops warm-up

James Thompson put his LADA Granta car on top of the timesheet in this morning’s warm up session. The Briton clocked a lap of 1:26.914 that was enough to beat the provisional fastest time set by Yvan Muller at 1:26.957.

In a very close session, Rob Huff and Tom Chilton ranked third and fourth with times of 1:27.172 and 1:27.224, respectively, followed by Nykjær, MacDowall, Monteiro and Michelisz, all within three tenths of a second of the fastest lap.

During the session Stefano D’Aste lost control of his BMW and hit the barrier at Turn 10 but managed to rejoin, James Nash limped back to the pits with a puncture to his front left tyre, while Mikhail Kozlovskiy spun his LADA at Turn 5 and rejoined.