Honda protest Citroën’s qualifying behaviour, thrown out by the stewards

The Castrol Honda Racing World Touring Car Team lodged a protest against Citroën drivers Yvan Muller and Ma Qing Hua for unsporting conduct in the second part of qualifying on Saturday, with the stewards deliberating until 11pm on the incident, but have ruled that the protest is inadmissible.

Yvan Muller and Ma Qing Hua both set slow times in Q2 ensuring a front-row start for race two, which was possible after Mehdi Bennani’s SLR Citroën and Néstor Girolami’s Nika Honda had both crashed out, with only the top ten of the 12 participants in Q2 reversed.

Muller’s time of 2:39.871 was over 40 seconds from the eventual pole position time , while Ma’s was more than 1 minute and 20 seconds off the pace.

At the same point in qualifying, the two Hondas were also on track and had not yet set a time, but both Gabriele Tarquini and Tiago Monteiro went flat out and qualified third and sixth in the session, with Tarquini able to progress to the top five shoot-out.

“I decided to go for Q3 as the pace was there,” said Tarquini. “I did a good lap, but with traffic with Yvan it cost me something there.”

The Honda team then lodged a protest on behalf of both of its drivers against Citroën Racing for potentially blocking them during qualifying and non-sporting behaviour on the track.

The stewards ruling concludes that Ma Qing Hua was behind Tarquini and Monteiro at all times during Q2 and therefore did not impede them.

The stewards also ruled that although Ma’s lap was slow, he did not impede any other competitors as he was the only car on the track at the time.

They also ruled that Yvan Muller’s lap time was similar to lap times set by bother competitors and was not deliberately slow or that it was dangerous to other competitors, and that Muller was off the racing line and did not impede Tarquini and Monteiro, and therefore didn’t consider Citroën’s drivers behaviour a breach of Article 42 of the International Sporting Code.