Björk WTCC demotion hands Valente Opening Race promotion

Hugo Valente will begin life as a factory driver in the FIA World Touring Car Championship on pole position for Sunday’s Opening Race following Thed Björk’s demotion to the back of the grid.

Björk’s times were disallowed after his Volvo S60 Polestar TC1 failed a ground clearance check, which promoted Rob Huff from P10 to P9 and Valente from P11 to P10 in the Qualifying Q2 classification, which determines the starting order for the reverse-grid Opening Race with the P10 driver starting P1 and the P9 driver joining him on the front row.

Like Norbert Michelisz, Frenchman Valente is a product of the WTCC Trophy and has been handed a dream chance with a factory team for 2016, signing for LADA during the winter break.

“I’m absolutely delighted to have secured the reversed grid pole position and tomorrow’s races are going to be very interesting,” said Valente, 23. “This weekend has been harder than expected. I was somewhat off the pace in the wet and then slightly further in the dry and that’s also due to the unstable conditions we’ve had this weekend. If the weather was consistent, I would be able to use Nicky [Catsburg] and Gabriele [Tarquini] as a reference and learn from them, but there hasn’t been an opportunity for that.”

Valente’s LADA Sport Rosneft team-mates Catsburg and Tarquini will line-up in P5 and P11 for the Opening Race respectively. While Catsburg made it to Q3, albeit he was unable to set a time after he left his pit area too late, Tarquini blamed a mistake through Turn 5 for his failure to progress beyond Q2.