Gabriele Tarquini broke Chevrolet’s dominance and earned a first pole position for Honda’s new World Touring Car project at Marrakech.
The Italian went fastest early in Q2 after ensuring he exited the pits in the midst of the RML and Bamboo Cruzes, giving him the perfect tow for his opening lap.
That decision proved crucial, although Tarquini’s pacesetting 1m44.358s also owed to a degree of fortune as late traffic prevented the Cruze drivers from fighting back.
Tom Chilton, in particular, had been on an extremely quick lap and was half a second under Tarquini’s time after the second sector, only to surrender twice that advantage as he came across Fernando Monje’s Campos SEAT.
The Spaniard’s late arrival effectively prevented any of the frontrunners – who had all been running in one pack – from improving.
The order was therefore decided by the opening salvos, with Tarquini taking pole, 0.0048s ahead of Briton James Nash in the lead Bamboo car.
Yvan Muller and Michel Nykjaer share the second row ahead of Chilton and Alex MacDowall.
World champion Rob Huff and Munnich SEAT team-mate Marc Basseng will start seventh and eighth.
Monje was released in a bid to earn 10th spot, which was up for grabs as damage to the cars of James Thompson and Tom Coronel left both unable to compete in Q2.
Unlike at Monza, Thompson’s issue was of his own doing as he knocked the front left of his car against a wall in Q1.
Coronel meanwhile misjudged his braking at Turn 10 in the preliminary session and went into the back of ROAL BMW team-mate Darryl O’Young.
O’Young had helped tow Coronel into the top 12 at his own expense moments before. The Hong Kong racer will start both races from 13th.
It was one of several incidents in a scrappy Q1.
Home favourite Mehdi Bennani also hit the wall, while Tarquini’s team-mate Tiago Monteiro brought out the red flags when he crashed into the wall at the second chicane and, unable to rejoin, could only watch as he was slowly bumped from the top 12.
Times to follow…
Horace Gould Jean Marc Gounon Emmanuel de Graffenried Lucas di Grassi Cecil Green
No comments:
Post a Comment