Photo: WTCC Media

Rob Huff leads the way in Macau FP1

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Championship leader Rob Huff was fastest of all in the first practice session on Friday morning in Macau. The Chevrolet driver’s closest competition came from Tiago Monteiro’s Honda, with the Portuguese driver just over a tenth of a second behind.

The session ran for the full 30 minutes, with Huff first to set the benchmark which immediately bettered by team-mate Yvan Muller.

Then it was Tiago Monteiro’s turn, with the Honda driver putting in a 2:33.203 to go fastest, before Huff returned to the top of the time sheets, improving by over a second on Monteiro’s time with a 2:32.175. The Briton found even more time later in the session to break into the 2:31s with a time of 2:31.899, despite locking up in the second sector.

Monteiro, whose Honda Civic is running 70kg lighter than the Chevrolets this weekend, found more time on his final lap and closed to 0.134 seconds of Huff at the end. The other two works Chevrolets of Alain Menu and Yvan Muller were third and fourth, around a second down on Huff’s best time.

Zengõ Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz finished the session as the top driver in the Yokohama Independents’ Trophy, setting a late improvement to go ahead of Mehdi Bennani in the rival BMW 320 TC of Proteam Motorsport.

Gabriele Tarquini was the fastest of the SEATs in seventh place, with Stefano D’Aste, Pepe Oriola and Franz Engstler completing the top ten.

Henry Ho’s Five Auto Racing Team-run BMW 320si lasted as far as San Francisco before coming to a halt, as he had just outside of the pits in the first test session yesterday. The only contact in the session was for ROAL Motorsport’s Kei Cozzalino, who crashed his car around the back of the circuit before Paiol, and dragged his heavily damaged BMW 320 TC back to the pits.

The next session is FP2 and takes place at 12:15 MST (local time)