Yvan Muller leads wet Oschersleben practice

Yvan Muller was quckest in a very wet first free practice session at Oschersleben in Germany with Alain Menu second. Gabriele Tarquini split the three Chevrolets with third.

The conditions saw countless trips off the circuit for many drivers, most notably those in the rear-wheel drive BMWs.

The first out though was Aleksei Dudukalo in the SUNRED León 1.6T. The Russian driver broke the front splitter on the León and buried the car in a gravel trap before completing a lap.

The Chevrolet drivers mostly dominated the session, with Alain Menu, Rob Huff and Yvan Muller swapping best laps to lead throughout the session. Their initial times started in the 1:55s and worked their way down to what was the best lap, a 1:49.668 from Muller. Rob Huff’s qualifying lap record from last year was a 1:35.518.

Yukinori Taniguchi, receiving tuition this weekend from Colin Turkington, also spun into the gravel. He was able to get back to the pits with assistance from the marshals, but was later black flagged when he rejoined the session for having received outside assistance.

The red flag was brought out with 13 minutes to go after Fabio Fabiani in the normally aspirated BMW 320si of Proteam Racing spun at the first corner, slamming backwards into the tyre markers. After a brief halt, the session resumed, with Yvan Muller briefly leaving the circuit shortly after setting the fastest time.

Robert Dahlgren was fifth fastest in the Volvo, with Michel Nykjaer the top placed independent driver in sixth.

Turkish driver Ibrahim Okyay is at the circuit but didn’t take part in the session.

The next practice session is at 12:15 CET.