ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel set the fastest time in first practice for the World Touring Car Championship on the streets of Porto to beat RML’s Yvan Muller to the top by 0.199 seconds.
Click here for the full first practice times.
The Dutchman set his fastest time late in the session, benefitting from improving track conditions and falling times as the session went on.
“I love street circuits. I’m always quite confident on street circuits, like in Formula 3, Macau and those kind of things,” said Coronel. “It feels nice but you don’t have to be the world champion of free practice. To be honest, I didn’t take any risks – it just feels fine.”
With five minutes to go, Frenchman Muller had held the top spot in the times. Third was an impressive Pepe Oriola, racing in his new ex-Alain Menu Chevrolet Cruze for the first time. The young Spaniard had held the top time briefly towards the end of the session, and was just 0.250 seconds slower than Coronel.
Gabriele Tarquini was the top in Honda in fourth, ahead of team-mate and local driver Tiago Monteiro. Norbert Michelisz made it three Hondas in a row with sixth.
Rob Huff was seventh and the top SEAT driver, having earlier been the fastest man in the first third of the session. Tom Chilton was eighth, despite suffering a slide into the tyre wall with around ten minutes to go.
Stefano D’Aste and Mehdi Bennani completed the top ten in their PB Racing and Proteam Racing BMWs respectively.
A difficult practice session for the British bamboo-engineering team meant that drivers Alex MacDowall and James Nash could only manage the 19th and 24th fastest times.
Second practice takes place at 11:30 WEST (11:30 BST; 12:30 CEST).