Rain hands pole position to Yvan Muller

Eventhough the SEAT Léon TDI’s struggled on the dry Valencia track, the cars gained a lot of profit from their torque as rain poored down on the Spanish circuit during qualifying. It handed the pole position to Yvan Muller, who managed to profit the most from the wet conditions. His team mate Gabriele Tarquini took second place on the grid for the first race tomorrow.

The wet track caused a lot of yellow flags and even a red flag period half way through the session. Dutchman Jaap van Lagen spun of into the gravel trap in his Lada at turn 12. Others paid a visit to the gravel as well, but managed to keep on going. Yvan Muller and Jörg Müller almost colided after a spin.

The Chevrolet’s, who had been fastest so far during the weekend, went well in the wet as well. Alain Menu qualified in third, Robert Huff took fourth. Nicola Larini just managed to qualify inside the top ten.

Andy Priaulx was fastest of the BMW drivers, qualifying in sixth. Müller, Farfus and Zanardi followed in 7th, 8th and 9th. James Thompson had a difficult session and will start from twelfth tomorrow.

Update: Alain Menu’s times disallowed

After the end of the qualifying session the Stewards of the meeting disallowed all the times set by Alain Menu because his Chevrolet Lacetti did not comply with the 70-millimiter ground clearance.

This demoted the Swiss from third to the back of the grid and promoted Robert Huff to third and Jordi Gené to fourth.