ROUNDS 1 & 2 - CURITIBA, BRAZIL
QUALIFYING REPORT
Weather: sunny spells with a breeze in the morning, sunny
and warm in the afternoon; the track remained dry.
MULLER AND RYDELL GIVE SEAT FRONT ROW
Yvan Muller placed his SEAT León TDI on pole position
following an eventful qualifying session in Curitiba, with
a time of 1:24.295, the fastest time of the weekend so far,
half a second faster than Jörg Müller's pole from
last year.
His SEAT Sport team-mate Rickard Rydell followed closely
in second with a time of 1:24.404, and BMW Team Germany's
Augusto Farfus qualified third, 0.187 behind the leader.
Gabriele Tarquini set the fourth fastest lap, completing
SEAT's great day as the Spanish manufacturer occupied three
of the top four positions, while Nicola Larini emerged as
the fastest Chevrolet driver claiming the fifth spot.
Farfus' team-mate Jörg Müller clocked the sixth
best lap and then failed to improve it when he spun near the
end of the session in front of three other BMW cars (Farfus',
Zanardi's and Porteiro's) who missed him by inches.
The action-packed qualifying began with some of the drivers
not immediately joining the track. Once everyone was out Ibrahim
Okyay ran wide at turn 9 and Olivier Tielemans spun at turn
3 but rejoined.
Seventeen minutes into the session Alain Menu came off the
track at the last corner and his Chevrolet crashed into the
wall. Menu escaped unharmed but shocked; the first checks
at the tracks medical centre were all negative, but as a precaution
he was transported to the closest hospital for scans.
The session being red-flagged meant that Menu's team-mate
Robert Huff and Farfus, amongst others, had to abort some
very promising fastest laps.
Ten minutes later the qualifying resumed, but Müller's
spin caused a yellow flag that prevented many drivers to improve
further.
Larini was amongst those who succeeded and moved up to fifth.
Pierre-Yves Corthals qualified his Exagon Engineering SEAT
on pole position in the independents' class with a time of
1:25.363, which placed him in 15th position overall.
BULLET NEWS
PRACTICE 1 - MÜLLER JUMPS ON TOP AT THE END
Jörg Müller went fastest on a track that still
had some puddles after a rainy night. With a time of 1.24.566
he popped his BMW into the top spot in the final moments of
the session, ahead of Alain Menu with a time of 1.24.893,
and Augusto Farfus 0.337 behind the leader.
Pierre-Yves Corthals headed the Independents with a time
of 1.25.982, which put him in 15th position overall.
PRACTICE 2 - CORONEL LEADER OF THE PACK
Tom Coronel took the top spot in a surprise finish with a
time of 1.25.036. He led from Augusto Farfus, only 0.002 seconds
behind the Dutchman, with Nicola Larini in third with a gap
of 0.207.
The second session was even closer than the previous one
with the first fourteen drivers covered by just 7 tenths of
a second.
SEAT Sport driver Gabriele Tarquini missed the second half
of the session due to hitting the kerb at turn 2 on his sixth
lap and breaking the suspension.
Pierre-Yves Corthals headed the Independents' class once
again with a time of 1.26.051, an improvement of nearly a
second from this morning's session.
CHEVROLET'S ARGENTINE GUESTS
The Chevrolet Elaion team - the reigning champion in the
Argentine TC2000 championships - paid a visit to their fellow
WTCC colleagues in Curitiba.
Drivers Marcelo Bugliotti, Christian Ledesma and Ricardo
Risatti, together with team manager Jorge Málquez spent
a lot of time visiting Chevrolet's garage and talking to Alain
Menu, Nicola Larini and Robert Huff.
THEY SAID, THEY SAID.
Yvan MULLER
"It's a very good start to the season, but qualifying
is one thing and the race is another thing. We can be very
competitive on one lap but the race is much harder on the
tyres. Last year we were nowhere as BMW finished 1-2-3 in
both races. I hope we can do better this year. The forecasts
say it will be warm tomorrow, but for us rain would be better."
Rickard RYDELL
"I'm really pleased to come back to SEAT. I like the
championship and having tried other categories I really enjoy
the World Touring Cars. To be on the front row together with
Yvan is a really good start. But just like Yvan said doing
more laps with the tyres will be different. The turbo-diesel
car makes a little bit harder to go through the race as we
have to cope with the front wheel drive."
Augusto FARFUS
"Qualifying was a bit strange with the red flag in the
middle of the session that disturbed everybody. I was on my
fast lap so I had to abort and on following attempt I Jörg
spun in front of me so it wasn't a perfect situation, but
to be third on the grid is good. We know that we will be quite
strong in the race. We expected SEAT to be ahead in the qualifying,
so let's see for the race and try to fight for the podium."
Pierre- Yves CORTHALS
"It is good for me to come here and be competitive straight
away, because we did not test during the winter so I am happy.
Our petrol-powered cars has a different set-up compared to
the other SEAT so we'll see the way it will behave during
the race."
Robert HUFF
'We should have been right up the front, but on the lap where
I had my good first sector Alain had an incident, quite a
big incident, and I had to abort. It was a shame. The last
lap was an improvement but we had a yellow flag at turn 7
so again I had abort. The car has the potential, last year
there were a lot of problems with the understeer, and this
year we have worked very hard on this and we've come here
and had the opposite."
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