Tom Chilton expecting tough fight with arch-rival Gabriele Tarquini in the opening race

Tom Chilton starts the first night race at the Losail International Circuit on pole position in his Sébastien Loeb Racing Citroën courtesy of the top ten reversed grid, but admits he’s apprehensive about sharing the front row with Lada’s Gabriele Tarquini, a driver with which the 31-year-old has had numerous incidents with in the past.

“There’s no love lost between us,” said Chilton to TouringCarTimes. “In the five years I’ve been in the World Touring Cars, he’s hit me more times than all the other drivers put together, so for whatever reason he doesn’t like me. It’ll be interesting if we got into that first corner side-by-side. You know Gabriele, he doesn’t give up without a fight, but I race in touring cars and nothing else because I like a fight. I hope we can win, but if not at least on the podium as the team deserve it.”

Chilton said the objective from the off was to qualify in tenth place after struggles on Thursday, although team-mate Mehdi Bennani was able to secure his first pole position for the main race, thanks in part to mistakes by all four of his rivals in the one-lap shootout.

“I came here today aiming for (the reversed grid pole with) P10, as I didn’t want to be sixth,” explained Chilton. “Mehdi thought he’d be about there as well as we struggled in practice yesterday, but we worked on the car overnight, I worked with Nick (Silvester) my engineer and aimed for P10 and we got it. I was sweating a bit at the end that Nicky (Catsburg) could have pipped me into 11th, but I did the Andy Priaulx special and got the reversed grid.”