Sonoma, FP1: Top three for Chevrolet

Oriola fastest ahead Chilton and Muller

Chevrolet cars set all of the top three lap times during the first Free Practice session at the Sonoma Raceway, with the Tuenti Racing Cruze of Pepe Oriola (1:45.966) fastest ahead of the RML cars of Tom Chilton (1:46.038) and Yvan Muller (1:46.047).

Gabriele Tarquini’s Honda Civic was fourth quickest, with a best time of 1:46.312, and the SEAT León of Rob Huff (1:46.614) rounded off the top five times.

Sixth fastest, and best of the BMW cars, was the 320 TC of Franz Engstler (1:46.744), despite an incident that saw the car slide off the track midway through the session. Less lucky was Tom Coronel, whose ROAL Motorsport BMW hit the barrier at Turn 11 after only a few minutes; the incident bringing out the red flags while the car was recovered.

The chicane at Turn 9 also caught out several drivers, with the Honda Civic cars of Tiago Monteiro and Norbert Michelisz both forced to cut the chicane after out-braking themselves. Charles Ng then spun at Turn 2 with only a few minutes of the thirty-minute session remaining.

Free Practice 2 is scheduled to start at 11.00 local time (20.00 CET) with the two-stage Qualifying session due to begin at 14.00.