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Argentina WTCC: Yvan Muller takes commanding pole

Yvan Muller continued his superlative Argentina form by taking his fifth pole of the World Touring Car Championship season in commanding style

The Frenchman topped the timesheets for the duration of Q1, and resumed the trend from the outset in Q2.

En masse slipstreaming, which carried shades of this year's Salzburgring farce, meant there was a chance Muller could be beaten even as the chequered flag flew.

Tom Chilton fuelled that faint hope when he went quickest of all in the first sector, but Muller's response was typically emphatic: new overall bests in the second and third splits carried him to a 1m47.920s, comfortably the fastest lap all weekend.

Chilton's improvements did lift him to second, but his gap of 0.503 seconds to Muller served only to underline the latter's dominance.

Norbert Michelisz and Gabriele Tarquini also found speed late on, securing a share of the second row in the process.

Tiago Monteiro in the second works Honda was three spots further back in seventh, but will start from the back of the field after being forced to change engines earlier in the day.

Pepe Oriola, Alex MacDowall, James Nash and Michel Nykjaer - currently Muller's closest points rival - will therefore lock out the top eight starting spots for tomorrow's opener.

Home favourite Jose Maria Lopez was the only BMW driver to progress into Q2, and ended up grabbing 10th - meaning he will start from reverse-grid pole for only his second WTCC race.

Hugo Valente and James Thompson rounded out the top 12 in Q1, although the former takes a 10-place grid penalty in race one.

Rob Huff, Marc Basseng and Tom Coronel were among the high-profile casualties of Q1.

Huff had also been forced to take an engine change and, with the Munnich team frantically working on his car, was only able to get out for one lap in Q1. He ended 14th, but like Monteiro will have to start from the back.

Pos  Driver              Team/Car          Time       Gap
 1.  Yvan Muller         RML Chevrolet     1m47.920s
 2.  Tom Chilton         RML Chevrolet     1m48.423s  +0.503s
 3.  Norbert Michelisz   Zengo Honda       1m48.855s  +0.935s
 4.  Gabriele Tarquini   Honda             1m48.919s  +0.999s
 5.  Pepe Oriola         Tuenti Chevrolet  1m48.979s  +1.059s
 6.  Alex MacDowall      Bamboo Chevrolet  1m49.039s  +1.119s
 7.  Tiago Monteiro      Honda             1m49.177s  +1.257s
 8.  James Nash          Bamboo Chevrolet  1m49.236s  +1.316s
 9.  Michel Nykjaer      Nika Chevrolet    1m49.406s  +1.486s
10.  Jose Maria Lopez    Wiechers BMW      1m49.674s  +1.754s
11.  Hugo Valente        Campos SEAT       1m50.130s  +2.210s
12.  James Thompson      Lada              1m50.353s  +2.433s
13.  Marc Basseng        Munnich SEAT      1m50.272s  Q1
14.  Rob Huff            Munnich SEAT      1m50.314s  Q1
15.  Fernando Monje      Campos SEAT       1m50.583s  Q1
16.  Tom Coronel         ROAL BMW          1m50.744s  Q1
17.  Stefano D'Aste      PB BMW            1m50.788s  Q1
18.  Mikhail Kozlovskiy  Lada              1m50.832s  Q1
19.  Charles Ng          Engstler BMW      1m51.328s  Q1
20.  Darryl O'Young      ROAL BMW          1m51.345s  Q1
21.  Rene Munnich        Munnich SEAT      1m51.368s  Q1
22.  Mehdi Bennani       Proteam BMW       1m51.862s  Q1
23.  Franz Engstler      Engstler BMW      1m51.866s  Q1

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