José María López leads final practice at the Nürburgring Nordschleife

Citroën’s José María López was fastest of all in the final practice session of the weekend at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, toppling Honda’s Norbert Michelisz in the final moments in a wet-to-dry session.

With heavy rain overnight, the session started fully wet with the times almost a minute from Thursday’s dry pace, with López’s first benchmark of 10:28.300 holding throughout much of the session.

The first casualty was Nordschleife expert Sabine Schmitz, who made contact with the barrier in her Münnich Motorsport Chevrolet Cruze and returned to the pits with damage and was unable to set any further laps in the session.

As the conditions began to dry out, improvements started in the latter part of the session, with first ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel taking over the top of the time sheet, before Tiago Monteiro became the first driver under the ten-minute mark in his Honda Civic with a time of 9:59.830.

The Portuguese driver, whose championship challenge has been potentially dented following a late night decision to exclude Honda from the last two events by the FIA, was soon dropped by Lada’s Nicky Catsburg and then his own Honda team-mate Norbert Michelisz, before José María López jumped to the fore with a time of 9:41.561.

Honda’s Rob Huff had another difficult session. The Briton’s car had been repaired overnight by the team following a crash on Thursday in FP1, but a mysterious lock-up at Turn 1 saw the 36-year-old crash out into the barriers and needed recovery.

The next session is qualifying which starts at 12:45 CET.