Tom Coronel leads FP1 at Porto ahead of Muller & Oriola

ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel topped the first free practice session at the Porto circuit in his BMW 320 TC ahead of the two Chevrolets of Yvan Muller and new driver Pepe Oriola.

The session was delayed by 25 minutes due to damage in the support races, and the Hondas were the first cars to show their pace, with Gabriele Tarquini, Tiago Monteiro and Norbert Michelisz setting times which were good enough to see them end the session fourth, fifth and sixth fastest.

After an installation run, it was then 19-year-old Pepe Oriola who jumped to the top of the time sheets on his first session in the Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T, after switching across from SEAT since the last race.

Oriola’s time of 2:08.385 was soon bettered by RML’s Yvan Muller with a time of 2:08.334, but both were outdone by Coronel who set a last minute flyer at the end of the session to go fastest by almost two-tenths of a second.

There were two minor incidents in the session, with Campos Racing’s Hugo Valente locking up and heading into the barriers at Turn 4, and then soon after RML’s Tom Chilton sliding sideways into the tyre wall in his Chevrolet shortly after setting the eighth fastest time.

Rob Huff ended up as the fastest SEAT driver in the Münnich Motorsport SEAT León in seventh, whilst PB Racing’s Stefano D’Aste was the top placed Yokohama Trophy driver in ninth.

Proteam Racing’s Mehdi Bennani rounded out the top ten. Struggling n the session were the non-RML Chevrolets, with Michel Nykjaer’s Nika Racing Chevy down in 16th, and the two bamboo-engineering Chevrolets of Alex MacDowall and James Nash in 19th and 24th positions.

The next session is due to take place at 11:30 WET.