James Thompson achieves top ten with struggling Lada

James Thompson put the Granta Sport of the LADA Sport Lukoil team in ninth for the Macau race, which earns him a front row start for race two, at a track where the car is struggling compared to its rivals.

Slowest in the speed traps through the first sector, the smaller Granta of Thompson was able to set a time which was 2.2 seconds away from pole sitter Yvan Muller’s Chevrolet around the 6.1km circuit.

“I’m really happy to be where we are. We’ve been fast in the middle sector all weekend, but there’s not much to come,” said Thompson to TouringCarTimes.

“We made Q2 without using too many sets of tyres, and we had a good lap alone which put us ninth, so that’s about as good as it gets, and we start on the front row. I don’t think the performance of our car is any better than ninth, that is where we are, when fighting against six Chevrolets and three Hondas.

“We’re the slowest car in sector one. The first corner’s really difficult and we’re terrible through Mandarin, but once we get going up the hill and through the quick stuff at the top I’m pretty good, but that first sector’s really hard for us and there’s nothing we can do…aerodynamically we’ve got nothing but the tyres doing anything for us.”