Salzburgring WTCC: Sebastien Loeb leads Saturday practice
Fresh from victory at the Slovakia-Ring a fortnight ago, Sebastien Loeb led the way in World Touring Car Championship practice at the Salzburgring on Saturday morning
The World Rally Championship legend recorded his fastest time of 1m22.421s in the second of two free practice sessions.
Loeb's FP2 effort shaded championship leader Jose Maria Lopez by 0.149 seconds, while reigning WTCC champion Yvan Muller ended the morning in third.
Friday's testing pacesetter Lopez recorded the benchmark time of 1m22.771s in FP1, 0.197s ahead of Muller.
The second session was stopped after seven minutes when Hugo Valente suffered a high-speed crash on the entry to the Fahrerlagerkurve while attempting to maintain a slipstream from the dominant C-Elysee of Loeb.
Valente's troubles began when he cut the inside of the Turn 9 right-hander, sending his Campos Chevrolet wide.
Faced with little room to manoeuvre, the Frenchman applied a correction before spearing off the circuit to his left.
After sustaining a head-on impact against the barriers, the Cruze bounced back into the road, bringing a litter of gravel with it and forcing the following Tom Chilton and Lopez to take avoiding action.
A 20-minute clean-up interval precipitated Hungaroring reversed-grid winner Gianni Morbidelli knocking the Argentinean from his position at the head of the timing screens.
In the closing five minutes of the half-hour session, the Citroen trio responded to Morbidelli's challenge and resumed a one-two-three formation.
Munnich Motorsport racer Morbidelli survived to end the morning 'best of the rest', ahead of the fifth-placed leading Honda of former champion Gabriele Tarquini and Tom Coronel.
The opening session was also incident-packed, and was interrupted twice by red flags, denying Muller a late attempt at toppling Lopez's FP1 fastest time when the session was abandoned.
Loeb had been assisting his Citroen team-mate Muller in providing a slipstream when Mikhail Kozlovskiy's faltering Lada caused a stoppage with just 55 seconds of the scheduled half hour running time remaining.
Coronel ended FP1 in fourth, ahead of Valente who was also in the wars in the opening session.
After enduring power-steering problems on his factory Honda in Friday's test, Tarquini secured sixth ahead of Norbert Michelisz.
Zengo Motorsport racer Michelisz had survived a high-speed trip through the gravel during FP1, but the most significant incident occurred 13 minutes into the session when TC2 competitor Pasquale Di Sabatino lost the rear of his Engstler BMW at the Fahrerlagerkurve.
The Italian spun and embedded the front-right corner of his 320 TC into the Turn 10 tyre barriers, bringing out the red flags.
Lopez had already recorded his benchmark lap at the time of the crash, and Citroen were entrenched at the head of the classification.
Mehdi Bennani and Lada's James Thompson suffered separate moments running off the road on the exit of the final chicane.
In a troubled start to his Salzburg weekend, Thompson has been retrospectively excluded from the preceding Slovakia-Ring and Hungaroring race results, owing to an unauthorised break to the seal on his engine's oil sump.
The Briton and team-mate Mikhail Kozlovskiy are set to start from the final row of the grid at the Salzburgring's opening race, after Lada requested engine changes on their Granta 1.6Ts.
Practice 1
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
1. Jose Maria Lopez Citroen 1m22.771s 14
2. Yvan Muller Citroen 1m22.968s +0.197s 13
3. Sebastien Loeb Citroen 1m23.221s +0.450s 14
4. Tom Coronel ROAL Chevrolet 1m23.253s +0.482s 14
5. Hugo Valente Campos Chevrolet 1m23.321s +0.550s 11
6. Gabriele Tarquini Honda 1m23.342s +0.571s 18
7. Norbert Michelisz Zengo Honda 1m23.508s +0.737s 15
8. Tom Chilton ROAL Chevrolet 1m23.570s +0.799s 15
9. Tiago Monteiro Honda 1m23.581s +0.810s 14
10. Dusan Borkovic Campos Chevrolet 1m23.587s +0.816s 16
11. Mehdi Bennani Proteam Honda 1m23.689s +0.918s 11
12. Gianni Morbidelli Munnich Chevrolet 1m23.750s +0.979s 8
13. Robert Huff Lada 1m24.318s +1.547s 15
14. Rene Munnich Munnich Chevrolet 1m24.421s +1.650s 20
15. James Thompson Lada 1m24.688s +1.917s 12
16. Mikhail Kozlovskiy Lada 1m25.625s +2.854s 9
17. Franz Engstler Engstler BMW 1m27.693s +4.922s 17
18. Pasquale Di Sabatino Engstler BMW 1m28.668s +5.897s 6
19. John Filippi Campos SEAT 1m28.919s +6.148s 17
Practice 2
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
1. Sebastien Loeb Citroen 1m22.421s 16
2. Jose Maria Lopez Citroen 1m22.570s +0.149s 16
3. Yvan Muller Citroen 1m22.634s +0.213s 15
4. Gianni Morbidelli Munnich Chevrolet 1m22.778s +0.357s 14
5. Gabriele Tarquini Honda 1m22.846s +0.425s 16
6. Tom Coronel ROAL Chevrolet 1m22.931s +0.510s 13
7. Mehdi Bennani Proteam Honda 1m23.045s +0.624s 19
8. Tom Chilton ROAL Chevrolet 1m23.130s +0.709s 14
9. Dusan Borkovic Campos Chevrolet 1m23.197s +0.776s 15
10. Tiago Monteiro Honda 1m23.346s +0.925s 16
11. Norbert Michelisz Zengo Honda 1m23.457s +1.036s 18
12. Hugo Valente Campos Chevrolet 1m23.878s +1.457s 3
13. Rene Munnich Munnich Chevrolet 1m23.977s +1.556s 17
14. Robert Huff Lada 1m24.141s +1.720s 12
15. James Thompson Lada 1m24.697s +2.276s 12
16. Mikhail Kozlovskiy Lada 1m25.633s +3.212s 8
17. Franz Engstler Engstler BMW 1m26.742s +4.321s 15
18. John Filippi Campos SEAT 1m28.180s +5.759s 18
19. Pasquale Di Sabatino Engstler BMW 1m28.763s +6.342s 12
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Autosport 70: Why Portimao is the right home for the Portuguese GP
FV8 3.5 race winner Orudzhev switches to title-winning AVF team
How the post-Renault 3.5 series is shaping up
Power “didn't have any defence” against Dixon with tyre strategy at Long Beach
Ferrari announces HP as new F1 team title sponsor
Raul Fernandez set to get 2024 Aprilia MotoGP bike at Jerez
Ford simulator boosting M-Sport WRC Puma performances
Why joker laps are entering the mainstream
The making of the world's best tin-top driver
Volvo's plan to conquer the WTCC
The WTCC's Nordschleife gamble paid off
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments