Photo: Citroën Racing

José María López tops red flagged practice at the Nürburgring

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Citroën’s José María López was fastest in the second session of the day at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, with the Argentinian’s first run of 8:44.236 keeping him on top of the time sheets throughout the session, which was red flagged with two minutes to go following a crash for Honda’s Rob Huff.

The session was not as fiercely contested as the morning’s test, with the 60-minute free practice initially led by Sébastien Loeb Racing’s Tom Chilton before López set his best time on his first flying run, which was five seconds off the pace shown by Yvan Muller earlier in the day.

Nicky Catsburg bounced back from an early puncture to become the first threat to López, putting his Lada Vesta up to second place, but the Dutch driver was still 2.4 seconds from the reigning champion’s time.

Tom Chilton then found more time in his Citroën C-Elysée WTCC to close to within 1.3 seconds of López, before Yvan Muller mounted a charge in the last ten minutes to take the spot from the leading privateer, just over a second behind his Argentinian team-mate.

Honda’s Norbert Michelisz suffered with a throttle issue early on and came back to the pits, but the team were able to repair his car within the hour and get him back out where he’d end up going sixth fastest. The Hungarian wasn’t the only one to suffer technical issues, with Fredrik Ekblom forced to return his Polestar Cyan Racing Volvo S60 to the pits with a broken cylinder.

There were further puncture related issues in the session, with Hugo Valente first slamming his Lada Vesta out just before 40 minutes were up, with his car was recovered under yellow flags, while 2012 champion Rob Huff suffered a more significant impact with the barrier just after Füchsrohre with just three minutes remaining which was also seemingly puncture related.

With the Briton’s Honda Civic stranded on the entry into Adenauer Forst, the session was red flagged and not resumed, leaving López on top of the time sheets.

The next session is the final free practice of the weekend at 8:15 CET on Friday morning.