Photo: WTCC Media

Gabriele Tarquini fastest again in practice in Slovakia

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Gabriele Tarquini was fastest again in the second free practice session of the WTCC round at the Slovakiaring, despite an early scare, running off into the gravel and missing most of the session.

The Italian’s best time of 2:12.228 was just a fraction slower than the time he produced in the morning practice session. Tarquini was off into the gravel in the final sector of the track during his first run, but when René Münnich beached his Münnich Motorsport SEAT at Turn 9 and brought out the red flag it gave the Castrol Honda Racing Team some extra time to work on clearing the gravel out from the car.

A number of drivers continued to struggle for grip and slid off into the gravel during the session, including both of Engstler Motorsport’s drivers Charles Ng and Franz Engstler, Wiechers-Sport’s Fredy Barth, bamboo-engineering’s Alex MacDowall and the #38 Münnich Motorsport SEAT of Marc Basseng.

With Münnich’s car needing repairs after his gravel excursion and gearbox problems in FP1, the German driver will be heading into qualifying with almost no track time this weekend whatsoever, though at least he has experience of the track with the team having tested here before the season start.

Tom Boardman was only able to set one lap and remained in the pits for the rest of the session, struggling with issues with the dampers in FP1 in the newly re-shelled SEAT.

Second and third fastest in the session were the two RML Chevrolets of Yvan Muller and Tom Chilton, with Rob Huff the fastest of the SEATs in fourth and the only other car within a second of Tarquini’s time.

Tiago Monteiro was fifth fastest and was on a better lap in his Honda Civic when the yellow flags came out for MacDowall’s car stranded in the gravel.

Darryl O’Young was the fastest of the Yokohama Trophy drivers in sixth and was the best placed of the BMWs, with Norbert Michelisz setting a late improvement to go seventh ahead of Campos Racing’s Fernando Monje.

ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel and Tuenti Racing Team’s Pepe Oriola completed the top ten.

The Ladas also continued to show problems with their pace with James Thompson only 17th fastest, 2.7 seconds down, with Mikhail Kozlovskiy 21st more than four seconds slower than Tarquini.

Qualifying for tomorrow’s races gets underway at 15:30 CET.