Chevrolet kicked off the defence of their 2011 FIA World Touring Car Championship titles at Monza, the host for the opening two rounds of the 2012 season.
Qualifying saw the RML run Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T finish second, third and fourth fastest while guest driver Rickard Rydell ensured four Cruzes inside the top five – Pole Position went the way of Italian driver Gabriele Tarquini for the Lukoil Racing Team.
Finishing as the best placed of the three Chevrolet drivers was reigning Champion Yvan Muller, who shares the front row with former team-mate Tarquini.
Muller is pleased with the qualifying result, as he was out of contention at one stage: “I’m pleased with the result. The work we have done and the team strategy worked as planned. My only concern was that it took a little bit longer to have a clean and fast lap in Q1, so at one point I was out of the top 12, which is always stressful. I must congratulate Gabriele [Tarquini] for the fantastic lap that gave him pole. I’ve always said that this 2012 championship is going to be more closely-fought and this first response from the track proves it.”
Third on the grid for the opening race of the season is team-mate Huff, who secured a double victory at Monza last year. He reckons that it has been a good day for the Chevrolet team, despite missing out on Pole Position: “A good day for the team, although we couldn’t secure pole. Still, our towing strategy was successful and the car feels good. We are significantly faster than last year in Monza, but I think this is also due to the fact it is much earlier in the year and the turbo and the tires are working better in cooler temperatures.”
Fourth is Alain Menu, who was surprised at how his Cruze was handling in qualifying compared to earlier in the day: “I’m satisfied with the result, although I was surprised to see how different track conditions were in qualifying with respect to free practice. The car was actually oversteering in the morning and understeering in the afternoon, especially in key points such as the Parabolica and the Lesmo corners.”
Eric Neve summed up the qualifying session: “It was a very close qualifying session where slipstreaming again played a decisive role. It’s a good start of the season for Chevrolet and it’s interesting to see that the gap is narrowing. It is going to be an exciting championship.”
The two Independent Chevrolet Cruzes of bamboo engineering finished eighth and eighteenth, with WTCC debutant Alex MacDowall finishing fifth out of the six Cruze drivers while former Auto GP racer Pasquale Di Sabatino finished eighteenth fastest.
The 2012 season has seen the introduction of a new qualifying system, with the top twelve drivers from the first part of qualifying progressing into the second section while the top ten drivers from the second part of qualifying reversed to form the grid for race two.
After qualifying, Muller sits second in the Championship on four points, Huff is third with three while Menu is fourth on two – the top five drivers in qualifying now score Championship points, with the Pole sitter securing five points.