Rob Huff has taken his first World Touring Car Championship pole position of 2012 at the Salzburgring, with Chevrolet team-mates Yvan Muller and Alain Menu once again filling the top three positions.
Click here for the full qualifying results.
Huff’s first pole position of the year gives the British driver a much-needed boost and 5 points in the championship, as he seeks to close the gap on team-mate Muller. However the Frenchman was never far from Huff, with the final gap standing at 0.142 seconds. Muller had been trading top times with his Chevrolet team-mates, before Huff set the quickest time on their final run.
Starting in fourth for Sunday’s race will be Gabriele Tarquini, the Italian unable to challenge the blue trio ahead.
Alex MacDowall continued his strong form in practice to qualify in fifth for the first race, with the Brit the last driver within a second of the works Chevrolets. Alongside him on the third tow of the grid will be Tiago Monteiro, who has shown strong from throughout the weekend so far.
Stefano D’Aste qualified in seventh for Wiechers-Sport, whilst Pepe Oriola was eighth quickest for the SUNRED-run Tuenti Racing Team. Just two thousandths of a second further back is Tom Coronel, who struggled to find a good rhythm during qualifying and will start from ninth after a spin and several off-track excursions.
Lukoil Racing’s Aleksei Dudukalo qualified in tenth and will therefore start on pole position for the second of Sunday’s races. It will be the second time in his WTCC career that the Russian has started from the front row of the grid – it would have been his third but for engine woes in the season opener at Monza.
The reverse grid for the second race therefore sees Dudukalo on pole, with Coronel alongside. Oriola and D’Aste make up the second row of the grid.
Darryl O’Young and Mehdi Bennani qualified in 11th and 12th respectively, which is where they will start for both of Sunday’s races. O’Young was clearly pushing during the session and once again missed the turn one chicane on more than one occasion.
Just missing out on entry into Q2 was James Nash, who will start from 13th for both races. Alberto Cerqui will start alongside. The winner last time out in Hungary, Norbert Michelisz, had a difficult session and could only manage the 15th best time.
Pasquale Di Sabatino had shown promising top ten pace in both practice sessions but could only manage 16th in qualifying, some eight tenths of his team-mate MacDowall.
A disappoint qualifying session for Franz Engstler saw the German manage only 17th – although he was taken out towards the end of Q1 by Tom Chilton, who locked his brakes whilst attempting to slip-stream team-mate Nash. The incident brought out the red flags briefly whilst Engstler’s beached BMW was recovered. It is Engstler’s worst WTCC qualifying session since the Czech Republic in 2010.
Engstler’s team-mate Charles Ng was 18th, followed by Chilton in 19th who suffered moderate front-end damage to his Ford Focus after the contact with Engstler. Tom Boardman and Gábor Wéber were the slowest drivers, qualifying in 20th and 21st respectively.