Salzburgring, Tests: Valente and Bennani on López heels

With warm but overcast weather

The Citroën cars took the lead of operations from the start, with Yvan Muller improving twice the provisional best lap time (1.23.281, his best mark). At mid-session, though, Mehdi Bennani put briefly the Honda on top of the rankings (1.23.503) with Norbert Michelisz not far away (1:23.704), confirming the improvement of the Japanese cars.

One lap later, though, José María López, posted the best time of the session (1.23.101), almost equalled shortly after by Hugo Valente’s Chevrolet (1:23.128). The young Frenchman missed the top spot by only 27 thousandths of a second.

Bennani was eventually placed in third, only 1.5 tenths behind López, with Muller in fourth ahead of Tiago Monteiro, Sébastien Loeb, Gianni Morbidelli and Michelisz. Tom Chilton and Tom Coronel rounded off that top-ten who were covered by only seven tenths.

In TC2T, the session ended with the usual hierarchy, as Franz Engstler preceded again his own team-mate Pasquale Di Sabatino and John Filippi.
The session was stopped three minutes from the end, as both the cars of Coronel and Gabriele Tarquini stranded on the track, at the same spot.

The Dutchman’s Chevrolet suffered from a flat tire on the front left, while Tarquini’s Honda from a possible power-steering failure. Coronel was also (twice) among those missing the first chicane, together with Loeb, Valente and Engstler.