Huff and Bennani lock the front row for Race 1
Sébastien Loeb Racing’s teammates Rob Huff and Mehdi Bennani topped the Qualifying session that determined the grid positions for this afternoon’s Race 1 at Vila Real.
Huff proved to be the driver to beat as he set three consecutive fastest laps: 2:01.839, 2:01.000 and 2:00.924, topping the field for most of the session. On his pole position lap he also led Bennani to post the second fastest time of 2:00.951; they were the only drivers to go under the 2:01 mark and formed an all-Volkswagen front row.
Norbert Michelisz was the best of the rest in his BRC Racing Hyundai i30 N, qualifying third (2:01.280) ahead of the current points leader Yann Ehrlacher’s Münnich Motorsport Honda Civic (2:01.445). The YMR Hyundai cars of Thed Björk (2:01.683) and Yvan Muller (2:01.765) will fill the third row of the grid, while John Filippi put in a brilliant effort to qualify seventh in his Campos Racing Cupra (2:02.075).
Esteban Guerrieri (Münnich Honda), Gabriele Tarquini (BRC Hyundai) and Jean-Karl Vernay (Leopard Lukoil Audi RS3 LMS) rounded off the top ten. The Frenchman crashed on his last attempt to improve and caused the session to be red-flagged for good with three minutes left.
The Mateus chicane proved to be the trickiest place of the road course: there Muller and Dávid Zsolt Szabó (Zengő Motorsport Cupra) hit the barriers and had to pit for repairs; Morbidelli crashed and caused a red flag, while two other suspensions were needed to replace the plastic pegs.
The Peugeot and Alfa Romeo cars struggled to be on the pace: Aurélien Comte qualified the best of 308 in 15th position, two seconds off the pace, while Giovanardi’s Giulietta ranked 20th a further five tenths adrift.
The first race will start at 16:00 local time (17:00 CET) this afternoon.
