Tom Chilton tops morning warm-up at the Nordschleife

ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Chilton was fastest in the warm-up session as the teams prepared for WTCC’s first event at the iconic track, though the times over ten seconds slower than those seen in qualifying.

The warm-up was the first in the WTCC since the 2013 season finale at Macau, with warm ups having been dropped from the 2014 season. However, due to the special nature of the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the session was reinstated for this event only.

No cars were working on flat-out pace during the 30-minute session, instead working on set-up, practice starts and in some cases installation runs of new engines.

Lada Sport Rosneft didn’t get much running in the session, with Jaap van Lagen only circulating once on the Grand Prix loop following his engine change last night, while Rob Huff was the only driver to not take part in the session, also having changed an engine overnight.

Tom Chilton set his time right at the end, which took place in dry, sunny, but cool conditions. Chilton demoted Citroën’s Sébastien Loeb from the top spot with a time over five seconds faster than the rally legend, while Honda’s Tiago Monteiro followed on with a late improvement to go second fastest in the Civic, putting three different manufacturers in the top three positions.

Next up is the first three lap, 75km race at 11:15 CET.