Yvan Muller secured his 17th career pole in qualifying for the World Touring Car Championship at the Salzburgring, beating RML team-mate Tom Chilton to the top time in a bizarre session.
Click here for the full qualifying results.
Update: Penalties rain on WTCC drivers
With slipstreaming being of paramount importance at the high-speed Salzburgring in Austria, drivers clearly wanted to ensure they would receive a good slipstream during qualifying. However the need for a slipstream came to a bizarre conclusion at the end of Q2 when, as the pack bunched up with the seconds ticking down, no driver wanted to be at the head of the field. The result, bizarrely, was that all drivers missed the opportunity to complete a final flying lap.
The result meant that Muller took pole position, ahead of Chilton, who had set the pace in Q1. Rob Huff ended the session in third, ahead of the top bamboo-engineering Chevrolet of Alex MacDowall.
“I was on pole position after the first attempt and the situation was a bit crazy – everyone wanted to be on the tow of somebody,” explained a delighted Muller. “Tom was in front and going slowly – but they didn’t want to overtake. My engineer was telling me ‘the time is counting down, we have not much time’, and then at the last corner we had just three seconds to go. OK, pole position – it was easy!”
Nika Racing’s Michel Nykjaer was fifth, ahead of the two works’ Hondas of Gabriele Tarquini and Tiago Monteiro. The top ten was completed by Pepe Oriola, Norbert Michelisz and James Nash, who will start the second race on Sunday from pole position.
Stefano D’Aste ended the session as the top BMW driver in 11th, with the Italian missing out on the reverse-grid pole for race two by half a second.
Tom Coronel was 12th after failing to set a time in Q2. The Dutchman spent much of the session in the pitlane, before taking to the track in the closing minutes. Like everyone else, he left it too late to start a final flying lap. To add insult to injury, the ROAL Motorsport driver then lost control of his car on his in-lap, spinning lightly into the barriers.
Mikhail Kozlovskiy scored his best qualifying result of his WTCC career to-date by putting his LADA in 14th, although things did not go so well for his team-mate James Thompson, who stopped on track with a mechanical problem in Q1 and could only manage 20th.
A difficult session for the WTCC’s German racers saw Franz Engstler finish highest in 16th, ahead of Marc Basseng in 17th. Basseng, who is also taking part in the Nürburgring 24 hours this weekend, ended his Q1 run when he crashed lightly into the barriers at the end of the session.
Round 9 of the 2013 WTCC takes place at 12:50 CEST on Sunday (11:50 BST).