Rob Huff puts Lada on top in final practice in Moscow

Rob Huff was fastest of all in the final practice session at Lada’s home race at the Moscow Raceway, putting a time in during the final moments to demote the two Citroëns of Yvan Muller and José María López to second and third.

The two-time champion put the Vesta WTCC on top on Lada’s home turf with a time of 1:38.896, just under a tenth of a second ahead of Yvan Muller, who had held the top position throughout the majority of the session.

“The car’s been running really well all weekend,” said Huff after the session. “We had a few problems earlier on with the alternator, but the car’s feeling better every time.

“Because we had a few problems in the last new races we’ve saved a few sets of tyres, but we weren’t the only ones to (run new tyres in FP2). And other than Muller we also seem to have a few tenths on everyone else.”

The session was again generally incident free, with just minor offs for Citroën’s Ma Qing Hua and Zengő Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz, both in the final sector, but with neither hitting the barriers or taking any damage.

Tom Chilton put in a final flyer in the last moments his ROAL Motorsport Chevrolet to be the fastest of the independents’ class runners in fourth, dropping the Sébastien Loeb Racing-run Citroën of Mehdi Bennani to fifth.

Nicky Catsburg showed more pace in the #10 Lada Vesta, with the Dutch driver finishing the session seventh on his debut weekend with the Lada team, while the top Honda this time was Rickard Rydell. The Swede is racing at the Moscow Raceway for the first time and is already one session behind everyone else after missing the 30-minute test yesterday, but was able to put his Honda Civic eighth, while Gabriele Tarquini was tenth after having topped the first two practices in the factory Honda.

The next session is qualifying which begins at 13:30 local time.