Yvan Muller takes pole by a clear second in Macau

RML Chevrolet driver Yvan Muller has claimed pole position for the final race of the 2013 season and his last for the team, breaking the lap record at the Guia circuit in a heavily disrupted session.

There was drama in the build up to the session as RML worked against the clock to repair Tom Chilton’s Chevrolet Cruze, which had been heavily damaged in FP2. RML’s cause was aided in part with the preceding Formula 3 qualifying session overrunning due to three red flag stoppages.

The same number of red flags occurred in the WTCC’s 30 minute Q1 segment, with first Hugo Valente crashing out at Paiol, and then his Campos Racing team-mate Michael Soong caused the second flag when he hit the wall at Fishermen’s Bend, with his SEAT León catching fire.

After a 20 minute delay, the third red flag occurred when Fredy Barth’s Wiechers-Sport BMW crashed out, again at Paiol, causing Tom Chilton to abort his fastest lap in his newly repaired Chevrolet Cruze.

With just under five minutes on the clock there was time for just one more lap when the session resumed. On his run, Chilton was able to go seventh fastest, which fell to tenth after further improvements for Gabriele Tarquini, Rob Huff and Norbert Michelisz.

The unlucky driver in all this was Pepe Oriola, who had been fastest in FP2, but made a mistake in the second sector and finished up 13th and not going into Q2.

In Q2, Yvan Muller set a time of 2:29.770 on his first run to claim provisional pole position, with the Honda of Tiago Monteiro just three-tenths of a second behind.

The Münnich Motorsport SEATs left it late for their runs, which saw Rob Huff go fourth fastest and Marc Basseng 11th, just outside of the top ten, and Gabriele Tarquini improve to third.

Yvan Muller’s second run broke the lap record at the circuit, set by Rob Huff last year. Muller’s time of 2:28.933 was half a second faster than his former team-mate’s and secures the Frenchman his first pole at the Guia circuit. It was also a second clear of Monteiro’s time

In the independents’ battle, Alex MacDowall gains a crucial point for pole position, closing him to within 40 points of his bamboo-engineering team-mate James Nash with just 42 remaining.

Tom Coronel will start race two from pole position after setting the tenth fastest time, with the Lada of James Thompson set to share the front row.