Alain Menu takes pole position at Suzuka

Chevrolet driver Alain Menu has secured pole position at the World Touring Car Championship’s first visit to Suzuka ahead of Yvan Muller, whilst Robert Dahlgren qualifies third in the Volvo C30.

The Swiss driver looked in danger of dropping out of the top ten in the first qualifying segment which sets the provisional grid for the second race, so the 48-year-old went out to improve his time which put him fourth in the session. As a result, the race one pole sitter will start as the lowest placed of the regular three Chevrolet drivers in seventh for race two.

Yvan Muller and Robert Dahlgren improved their times on their second runs in qualifying to drop Rob Huff down to fourth, though Huff will be well placed in race two, starting third behind Tom Coronel’s ROAL Motorsport BMW who starts second and Darryl O’Young’s Bamboo Engineering Chevrolet, which will provisionally start from pole position for race two.

Tom Coronel will also start fifth for race one, with the three SUNRED Leóns of Tiago Monteiro, Michel Nykjaer and Gabriele Tarquini starting right behind him for race one’s rolling start.

Colin Turkington, in his second appearance in the Championship this year, was fastest in Q1 and tenth in Q2 which means he will start tenth for both races with the Q1 top ten times reversed for race two’s grid.

Proteam Racing’s Javier Villa is just outside of the top ten in 11th, with Yukinori Taniguchi the fastest of the Japanese contingent in 12th at his home race.

Toshi Arai qualified in 16th place on his first WTCC outing in the fourth RML-run Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T.

Race one gets underway at 14:35 local time on Sunday, with the second race at 15:50.