Practice 2 - The champion is back ahead

Defending champion Gabriele Tarquini and his SR-Sport SEAT León TDI set the pace for the first time this weekend, posting a lap of 1:24.664 early in the session that was never beaten. BMW Team RBM’s Augusto Farfus (1:24.713) and Andy Priaulx (1:24.798) have been consistently at the top of the time sheets and narrowly missed out on another opportunity to lead the field with Farfus just 0.049 seconds adrift of the Italian.

Yvan Muller (1:24.948) was the quickest of the Chevrolet cars ending the session fourth, closely followed by team mates Rob Huff (1:24.967) and Alain Menu (1:25.069).

Tarquini’s fellow SR-Sport racer Tom Coronel (1:25.198) finish seventh ahead of Jordi Gené (1:25. 228) in a close session which saw the top eight covered by just half a second.

After a heavy crash in practice earlier in the day, the bamboo-engineering team did a great job to get Harry Vaulkhard’s Chevrolet Lacetti back on track for the final few minutes of the session ahead of qualifying later today.

Franz Engstler (1:25.539) was the best of the Independents. The German continued to improve throughout practice and ended up tenth quickest overall in his BMW 320si.
Despite the grey sky threatening, the rain held off for the second practice of the day.