Photo: WTCC Media

Rob Huff claims season finale pole at Macau

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Rob Huff has taken pole for the last round of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship at Macau, breaking the qualifying lap record previously held by his team-mate Alain Menu with a time of 2:29.422.

The first qualifying segment saw all the works Chevrolets safely through, whilst there were a few minor incidents early on with Eurico de Jesus going down the escape road at Lisboa in his Honda Accord, and André Couto going off at Moorish Hill in the SUNRED León.

The session was then red flagged with four minutes to go after Fredy Barth crashed his SEAT León WTCC out at Police, taking heavy damage to the front of the car but was able to walk away unharmed.

When the session resumed, a number of cars attempted to improve their times and break into the top twelve, but in the rush to get across the line, held each other up and didn’t improve their times.

In Q2, Huff set what was to be his pole position lap on the first run, the only driver in the 2:29s. On their second and final run, Yvan Muller was able to improve his time but was still seven-tenths behind Huff, whilst Huff bolted in another 2:29.

Huff extends his championship lead to 37 points over Alain Menu and 42 over Yvan Muller as a result.

Gabriele Tarquini was the closest to the Chevrolets with a time just 1.5 seconds behind, whilst Tiago Monteiro took Honda’s best result in only their third weekend with fifth in the new Honda Civic.

Darryl O’Young took his third consecutive independents’ class pole position at Macau in the bamboo-engineering Chevrolet Cruze with sixth overall, whilst Norbert Michelisz was the best placed of the three independent drivers fighting for the title, whilst Pepe Oriola will start ninth in his SUNRED SEAT León for race one but second on the grid for race two. Stefano D’Aste missed the top ten and will start 11th for both races.

Alex MacDowall qualified in tenth place and so will start from pole position on the reversed grid for race two.

The first WTCC race takes place at 10:30am MST on Sunday.