José María López fastest in final test session at the Nürburgring

Citroën’s José María López was fastest in the second free practice session at the Nürburgring Nordschleife in dry conditions following on from the rain this morning, setting the best time of the weekend of 8:39.441 in his Citroën C-Elysée WTCC, just ahead of Hugo Valente’s Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1.

Following on from the rain this morning, conditions were much improved for the second practice session with all the cars returning to a dry set-up on their cars with slick tyres.

The first driver to run into drama was Sabine Schmitz, who brought back her Münnich Motorsport Chevrolet Cruze with damage to the front-left of her car on her first lap. She was able to complete one more run later in the session and wound up 16th fastest, just ahead of the ROAL Motorsport Chevrolet of Tom Coronel, who also had limited running due to a broken flat floor on his car.

Sébastien Loeb had set the first target time in his Citroën of 8:44.067, but the times were quickly coming down, with López first grabbing P1 on his first run with a time of 8:42.685, but then produced his best lap just over half way through the session and was the only driver under the 8:40 barrier.

Hugo Valente was able to bring the fight to López with the Campos Racing-run Chevrolet Cruze, with the 22-year-old French driver circulating the 25km track just under a second off of López’s pace.

Loeb finished the session third fastest ahead of the other two factory Citroëns of Yvan Muller and Ma Qing Hua, with Gabriele Tarquini the best placed of the Hondas in sixth, with Rob Huff and Jaap van Lagen seventh and eighth for Lada Sport Rosneft.

Qualifying is scheduled to get underway at 18:20 CET.