Pepe Oriola tops FP2 as Chilton crashes out hard

Tuenti Racing Team’s Pepe Oriola was fastest of all in the second practice session at Macau, while RML have a lot of work to do on Tom Chilton’s car after the British driver crashed out at Paoil, sustaining significant damage to his Chevrolet Cruze.

The driver, who’s in contention for second in the championship this weekend, crashed out on his first flying lap, hitting the wall on the left-side hard and then rebounded to the right hand side, damaging all four corners of the Chevrolet Cruze.

The session was immediately red flagged as the car was recovered to the pits, where the team have just over two hours to repair the car ahead of qualifying. When the session resumed, Yvan Muller set the fastest time on his first run of 2:31.256. The middle segment of the session was also disrupted further, with Charles Ng hitting the barrier at Turn 1 and having to drag his damaged BMW 320 TC around for a whole lap at a snail’s pace to the pits, with many cars having to slow to navigate past him.

The session was then red flagged after more debris was scattered on the circuit, with Oriola quick to set the fastest time when the session resumed, setting a best time of 2:31.027.

Tiago Monteiro ended up third fastest, again the quickest of the Honda drivers, with Marc Basseng the fastest SEAT driver in fourth, just a second down on Oriola’s time.

Rob Huff was fifth fastest in his Münnich Motorsport SEAT, with Gabriele Tarquini sixth for Honda.

Alex MacDowall was the fastest of the Yokohama Trophy drivers in seventh in his bamboo Chevrolet, ahead of Norbert Michelisz’s Zengõ Honda. The second bamboo Chevrolet of James Nash and Tom Coronel’s ROAL BMW completed the top ten.

After damage sustained in FP1, China Dragon Racing’s Ng Kin Veng did not take part in the session, and James Thompson didn’t set a timed lap in his Lada, returning to the pits with a technical problem after one lap.

Qualifying is scheduled to begin at 15:35 CET.