Sébastien Loeb and José María López have been stripped of their first and second qualifying positions after the technical checks.
During the post-qualifying checks, the FIA Technical Delegate tested the automatic fuel cut-off system on all the five cars that took part in Q3.
This test failed on the Citroën C-Elysée cars of Loeb and López; the same test had been successfully performed last week before the opening event of the season at Marrakech.
Consequently, the Stewards of the Meeting decided to disallow all lap times set by the two drivers who will be demoted to the back of the starting grid of both tomorrow’s races.
This will place Yvan Muller and Gabriele Tarquini on the front row of the starting grid for Race 1, while Mehdi Bennani and René Münnich will share the front row on the top-ten reverse grid for Race 2