James Thompson tops Moscow warm up

LADA Sport Lukoil’s James Thompson was fastest of all at the team’s home race in the morning warm up ahead of the two BMWs of Mehdi Bennani and Fredy Barth.

In dry conditions, Thompson’s time was just a tenth of a second slower than his fastest time set in Q1 yesterday set two-thirds of the way into the 15 minute session.

Mehdi Bennani, who starts from pole position for race two, was second fastest in his Proteam Racing BMW with Fredy Barth third in the Wiechers-Sport BMW 320 TC.

There were a few minor spins for Tom Coronel in his ROAL BMW and Charles Ng in his Engstler BMW, who ended up in the gravel, but the main problems in the session were all reserved for Castrol Honda Racing’s Gabriele Tarquini.

Although Tiago Monteiro ran without incident in the session with his new engine installed overnight, it now appeared that Gabriele Tarquini’s car was now suffering with the same problem as his Portuguese team-mate. The Italian headed out into the session half way through for one installation lap, after spending the first part of the session in the pits with the team working on the engine, before rejoining again for a second run on the track.

Though Tarquini’s times were good, a mistake in the final sector saw him slide off the track and into the barrier at Turn 13. The damage to the car was minor, but will delay returning to the car to the pits so that the team can continue to work on the Civic’s engine problem.

The first race takes place at 13:20 local time (11:20 CET).