José María López: “I was surprised when I saw the time”

José María López scored his 11th career pole position at Vila Real for Citroën, moving up to joint-fourth on the all-time pole statistics along with Augusto Farfus and Rob Huff, and says he was shocked when he saw his time, a 1:58.515, over half a second clear of his closest rival, team-mate Sébastien Loeb.

The Argentinian was last out in the one-lap shootout courtesy of being fastest in Q2, and from the first sector it seemed pole position was a certainty. His fourth pole of the season extends his points lead over Yvan Muller to 44 points, with his French team-mate getting a front-row starting position for race two either by design or accident.

“I want to congratulate my team, they did a fantastic job. It’s not only my lap, it’s also my engineers’ lap and my mechanics’ lap, as they worked hard for this,” said López. “Also that Yvan wasn’t in Q3 was a good opportunity for me to pull away in points.

“That gave me from one side the confidence, I had to try and do a good lap, a clean lap without mistakes, but I was also a bit more relaxed because of that as well.”

López produced the best lap of the weekend, the first under 1:59 in the one-lap shootout, with competitive targets set by both team-mate Loeb and Campos Racing’s Hugo Valente.

“I was surprised when I saw the time,” added López. “It was nice to get pole position especially in this part of the season, because…there’s just four races after this so it’s important to keep the pace and profit if your team-mates make a mistake.

“With the fight we are having with Yvan and Seb, every point is very important. In the last few races they’ve managed to be in front of me, it’s been a much harder championship than last year, they’re working hard and I’m having to keep up.”