Tarquini quickest in morning practice

Oschersleben - Free practice 1

The FIA WTCC resumed at Oschersleben’s Motorsport Arena today with Gabriele Tarquini (1:36.852) topping the timesheets during the 30-minute session fresh from the summer break.

Rob Huff (1:36.892) continued his good form to finished second for Chevrolet just 0.04 seconds adrift of the Italian and ahead of SR-Sports Jordi Gené (1:37.106).

On BMW’s home track, Andy Priaulx (1:37.123) was the quickest BMW Team RBM driver in fourth with his teammate Augusto Farfus (1:37.243) in sixth. Despite crashing out late in the session, Tiago Monteiro was fifth quickest with a time of 1:37.158.

Chevrolet’s Alain Menu (1:37.295) had a spin at Turn 1 early on before going on to set the seventh quickest time.

Denmark’s Michel Nykjær (1:37.339) was the top rookie in eighth ahead of Tom Coronel (1:37.354) and current championship leader Yvan Muller (1:337.455).

Local racer Franz Englster was the fastest Independent in 13th overall.

The red flag briefly interrupted proceedings ten-minutes in, after Stefano D’Aste hit the tyre barriers on both sides coming through the Hoyer-Schikane and badly damaging the front end of his BMW 320si. The session was paused while the marshals cleared all the debris from the track. D’Aste pitted for repairs and did not rejoin.

With five minutes left to run the red flag was out again bringing an early end to the session after Tiago Monteiro went straight on at the Hasseröder Kurve hitting the barrier head on.