Gabriele Tarquini leads Honda top three in Slovakia qualifying

Gabriele Tarquini has taken his second consecutive pole position of the season at the Slovakiaring, qualifying ahead of team-mate Tiago Monteiro and Zengõ Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz.

The Italian was fastest of all in the first segment of qualifying, going almost two seconds faster than he had in the free practice session, and although he made a mistake and set a slower time on his only run in Q2, it was still good enough to grab the pole position.

Tarquini’s team-mate Tiago Monteiro was just 0.104 seconds down on his team-mate, whilst Norbert Michelisz fought back from issues in the earlier practice session to grab third on the grid, his best result of the season.

Championship leader Yvan Muller could only manage fourth fastest and was the best placed of the Chevrolet drivers, just under two-tenths down on Tarquini’s time with team-mate Tom Chilton in fifth.

Alex MacDowall qualified as the fastest Yokohama Trophy driver in sixth, with Rob Huff the best placed SEAT driver in seventh place.

There was a 30 minute red flag period in Q1 after Darryl O’Young’s BMW 320 TC went off at Turn 9 and sustained heavy damage. It took some time for the car to be recovered and the barrier to be repaired before the session could resume.

O’Young therefore was unable to set a time and will start from the back of the grid if his car can be repaired for tomorrow, with Tom Boardman also set to join him on the last row after his car stopped on track with an electrical fault, despite having fitted a new engine.

With the top ten reversed for race two, Tom Coronel will start from pole position ahead of the last reversed grid race winner Pepe Oriola.

The first race tomorrow starts at 14:50.