Track conditions believed to have caught out the final three in qualifying

The two Citroëns of José María López and Yvan Muller and the Polestar Volvo of Thed Björk all lost time in the last sector on their runs in the final part of qualifying, with the drivers believing that the track conditions had changed significantly during the delay while the Honda of Norbert Michelisz was recovered from the gravel trap at Turn 13.

Björk missed out by just 0.036 on what could have been Volvo’s first pole position in the WTCC, while champion elect José María López was upset to have missed out on his final pole position in the WTCC after setting the lap record in the earlier part of qualifying.

“I was pushing really hard,” said Björk. “And I pushed a little bit too hard and I thought I did a mistake in the 15th corner, as I lost time there as the car didn’t react like it did before. When I saw that I was behind Mehdi (Bennani), I thought that was that, but when Yvan and López made mistakes I was more angry is it was only four-hundredths of a second.”

López will line up third on the grid for the main race, and eighth for the reversed grid first race this evening as a result of his qualifying performance.

“I’ve never heard so many people tell me ‘I’ve done a mistake’ so many times,” said López. “This is probably one of the pole positions I wanted the most. I jumped out of the car and was quite angry with myself…it doesn’t seem too often we do a mistake, but I think in the 30 minutes we’d stopped the track changed a lot. I was confident, I saw I was three-four tenths quicker and didn’t try too much, but I just lost the car.”