Honda’s Tiago Monteiro was the quickest driver during Friday testing for the World Touring Car Championship in the United States, posting a late fast lap to deny Rob Huff the top time.
Click here for the full Friday testing times.
Times continued to tumble throughout the Friday afternoon session, as the track continued to heat up and drivers got to grips with the dusty Californian circuit.
Whilst Monteiro had been inside the top ten for much of the session, Münnich Motorsport’s Huff had not posted a top ten time until the closing minutes of the session, when the Brit went 0.132 seconds slower than Monteiro’s time.
Pepe Oriola was third fastest in his Tuenti Racing Chevrolet, having briefly been top of the times with around ten minutes to go. Tom Chilton was fourth in the RML Chevrolet, having also been fastest for a matter of seconds towards the end of the session.
Honda’s Gabriele Tarquini had been floating around at the sharp end of the timsheets throughout, but ultimately ended up fifth, ahead of the ROAL Motorsport BMW of Tom Coronel who was also trading times at the top.
Championship leader Yvan Muller was seventh, ahead of Zengő Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz, Proteam Racing’s Mehdi Bennani and ROAL’s Darryl O’Young, who was the first driver more than a second off Monteiro’s pace.
Both bamboo-engineering Chevrolets failed to feature in the top ten, with Alex MacDowall in 12th and James Nash in 15th, with Nash the slowest Chevrolet driver.
LADA’s James Thompson finished the session in 17th, despite suffering damage to his front-left steering early on in the session.
First practice takes place at the Sonoma Raceway at 09:00 PDT on Saturday 7th September (17:00 BST; 18:00 CEST).