Tom Chilton was the fastest driver in this morning’s red-flagged World Touring Car Championship warm-up, which ended prematurely when Tom Boardman suffered a big head-on crash into the barriers.
Click here for the full warm-up times.
In the short fifteen-minute session the drivers were only able to complete a couple of flying laps each due to the session being red-flagged twice. The first stoppage came when Nika Racing’s Michel Nykjær clipped the kerbs at the second chicane, leaving him facing the wrong way on the following straight.
The second and session-ending stoppage came as a result of Special Tuning Racing’s Tom Boardman careering almost head-on into the barriers at the final chicane, clipping Alex MacDowall’s bamboo Chevrolet on the way in. Boardman appeared to have suffered a brake failure as he hit the wall with unabated speed. With only three minutes left to go, the session was abandoned.
Chilton’s time was therefore good enough for first, 0239 seconds faster than team-mate Yvan Muller. Ominously, no other drivers were within a second of the RML duo, with James Nash third and Boardman himself fourth, although his team will not be able to repair his car before the races this afternoon.
Münnich Motorsport’s Rob Huff and Marc Basseng were fifth and sixth, ahead of the top Honda of Tiago Monteiro in seventh. Completing the top ten were the BMW trio of Franz Engstler, Mehdi Bennani and Darryl O’Young.
There were several minor incidents as drivers pushed the limits in morning warm-up, with even Yvan Muller running wide at the first chicane and clipping the kerbs. Fredy Barth misjudged his braking and clipped Charles Ng, but no damage was done.
The first race takes place at 15:20 WET (16:20 GMT; 17:20 CET).