Photo: WTCC Media

Yvan Muller leads disrupted warm up at Monza

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Chevrolet’s Yvan Muller was fastest in the 15 minute warm up at Monza, which was halted early on after Darryl O’Young’s SEAT León caught fire.

The Frenchman lead the way with a time of 1:58.700, which was just 0.015 ahead of team-mate Alain Menu with Rob Huff rounding out an all RML Chevrolet top three.

The session was stopped before any timed laps were set after Darryl O’Young, running with a newly fitted SEAT Sport 1.6 turbo engine after a failure in qualifying yesterday, caught fire and had to be recovered.

Rickard Rydell was fourth fastest in the Chevrolet Motorsport Sweden Cruze, with Alex MacDowall the top independent runner in fifth in the Bamboo Chevrolet.

Pole sitter Gabriele Tarquini only set one complete lap which was 13 seconds off the pace, with the Italian returning to the pits for checks and changes to his SEAT León WTCC in light of the incident with O’Young’s car.

Norbert Michelisz was sixth fastest in the Zengo Motorsport BMW 320 TC with James Nash the fastest of the new Ford Focuses in seventh, with team-mate Tom Chilton also making the top ten with ninth.

Isaac Tutumlu in the Proteam Racing BMW 320 TC was black flagged late in the session with the Spaniard cutting the course on too many occassions.