Alain Menu snatches Sonoma pole from Tarquini

Alain Menu has taken pole position for Chevrolet at Sonoma Raceway, grabbing pole from SEAT’s Gabriele Tarquini in the final moments of the session.

Gabriele Tarquini looked set to grab his third pole of the season after setting a time of 1:45.468 in the second part of qualifying, but as all of the cars headed out for a second run at the end of the the 10 minute Q2 session, Alain Menu was the only Chevrolet driver able to improve, grabbing his first pole position since Morocco with a time two-tenths of a second faster than Tarquini’s.

Championship leader Yvan Muller will line-up third on the grid with Rob Huff fourth for the first race.

The BMWs had more pace than they’d shown in free practice, with four cars making it into Q2, the fastest of which was Norbert Michelisz, who took the independents’ class pole with fifth. Only two SEATs made it into Q2 and Ford just missed out with James Nash 13th and Tom Chilton in 17th.

Robb Holland was 21st and last on his first race in the WTCC, just behind Tom Coronel who was struggling in the session, spinning on his final run and losing a run behind a red flag in Q1 which was brought out as Aleksei Dudukalo spun into the gravel in Turn 2. Dudukalo’s time was good enough to get him into Q2 however, but he was unable to take part and will start 12th for both races.

With the top ten reverse grid for race two, Stefano D’Aste has provisional pole after qualifying tenth, Mehdi Bennani will start behind in the sole remaining Proteam BMW with Franz Engstler third on the grid.

The first race gets underway at 12:20 PST on Sunday.