|
Huff
set a provisional fastest time early in the session as he dipped below
1:36, but Gabriele Tarquini, last year's polesitter, bettered the time
just before the British driver went out for his final attempt. However,
the Chevrolet driver hooked up the car for a lap where he extended the
lead through each sector, eventually finishing nearly two tenths ahead
of Tarquini's SEAT León TDI.
Fellow
SEAT Sport driver Tiago Monteiro took third position, with SUNRED's Tom
Coronel in fourth place having had a very competitive day. Huff's team
mate Nicola Larini took fifth position, with Augusto Farfus who seemed
unbeatable in the practices this morning in sixth.
Farfus
was the highest placed of the BMW drivers as they struggled to find any
pace in qualifying. The next BMW was Andy Priaulx's down in ninth
position. SEAT Sport's Jordi Gené and Chevrolet's Alain Menu took
seventh and eighth positions respectively.
The session was extremely close, with the top sixteen drivers covered by only eight tenths of a second.
Despite
finishing the session with his car embedded in the tyre wall at turn
10, Exagon's Pierre-Yves Corthals took the pole for the Independents'
class, three thousands of a second ahead of title rival Sergio
Hernández. In addition to Corthals' final lap incident Coronel
outbraked himself at turn 12 early in the session, Stefano D'Aste,
Larini and Monteiro also had incidents. The latter hit a pile of tyres
and ended up carrying debris with him until the end of qualifying.
CORONEL STRIPPED OF FOURTH PLACE
Tom Coronel was stripped of his fourth place on the starting grid due to a Stewards' decision.
The
SUNRED's Dutchman had clocked the fourth fastest lap of 1:35.976, only
0.3 seconds behind Huff's pole position. However, his SEAT León failed
to restart after it was stopped at the weighing bay and this resulted
in his fastest lap being deleted. He was therefore demoted to 24th on the grid.
|
