Yvan Muller secures Hungaroring pole position

Yvan Muller broke last year’s pole record by more than two seconds to take his second pole position of the season at the Hungaroring, leading team-mates Rob Huff and Alain Menu.

Muller and Huff topped the times in the first qualifying section with Gabriele Tarquini’s SEAT close behind in third, but in Q2 the three works Chevrolet drivers found even more time, venturing into the 1:54s for the first time today, though Alain Menu left it to the dying moments of the session to set his time and knock Tarquini’s SEAT off of third place.

James Thompson was the only casualty of the session, stopping after just completing one timed lap in Q1 at Turn 5, but that was good enough to put the Lada Granta Sport in 16th place on the grid for its first WTCC appearance of 2012.

Also not making it into Q2 was the Lukoil SEAT of Aleksei Dudukalo, last week second on the grid at Slovakia and this week 18th, as well as fourth in the Championship Tom Coronel, the ROAL Motorsport driver qualifying way down the order in 19th place.

In Q2, Muller and Huff’s first times were in the mid-1:54s, with Tarquini’s best of 1:55.074 not close enough to challenge the two Chevrolets. Alain Menu aborted his run to put on a new set of tyres for a final stab right at the end of the session, but came across the BMW 320 TC of Franz Engstler on an in lap in the third sector which lost him time, and was only third fastest.

Mehdi Bennani qualified as the fastest independent and BMW driver in fifth and will share row three with the Zengõ Motorsport BMW of Norbert Michelisz.

Franz Engstler qualified in tenth and will provisionally start on pole position for race two, whilst Ford again made it into Q2 with James Nash 12th fastest in both Q1 and Q2, and will start behind former BTCC rival Alex MacDowall’s Chevrolet Cruze.

Race one takes place at 11:20 CET on Sunday.