Citroën’s José María López tops practice for the third time in Slovakia

Championship leader José María López topped the third and final practice session at the Slovakaring in his Citroën C-Elysée ahead of the Chevrolet RML Cruze of Hugo Valente, with Sébastien Loeb third in the sister Citroën.

The drivers all focussed on race runs in the early part of the session, with Yvan Muller setting the early pace on old tyres with a time of 2:07.099, with René Münnich briefly taking over at the top of the time sheets in his Chevrolet Cruze as the first driver to try out new tyres half way through the session.

That didn’t last for long however, with Sébastien Loeb going fastest for Citroën before José María López pulled out another 2:05 lap in his C-Elysée, with Hugo Valente getting close with a time just a quarter of a second down, the only other driver to get into the 2:05s so far this weekend.

The session was relatively incident free, though there was a scary moment for LADA Sport Lukoil’s Rob Huff, who went for a wild slide in Turn 9 and only just managed to avoid hitting the barrier in his Granta Sport. The 2012 champion was able to rejoin the session and set the 14th fastest time, the quickest of the Ladas, but a second behind the 13th fastest Chevrolet of Gianni Morbidelli.

Franz Engstler was fastest of the TC2T class runners in his BMW 320 TC, 1.3 seconds faster than Petr Fulín’s Campos SEAT.

Qualifying gets underway at 14:00 CET.