Zengő Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz secured pole position for Honda in qualifying for the World Touring Car Championship in Japan, beating Alex MacDowall and Tom Chilton.
Click here for the full qualifying results.
The Hungarian driver set the fastest time of the session at the start of the second stage of qualifying and finished 0.125s faster than bamboo-engineering’s MacDowall in the Chevrolet Cruze – the Cumbrian finished as the best of the Yokohama Independents’ with team-mate and title rival James Nash 5th.
Yvan Muller, who is on the cusp of securing his fourth WTCC drivers’ Championship lines up fourth on the grid, just behind RML team-mate and Sonoma race winner Tom Chilton. Muller could have been further up had it not been for a mistake at turn one on his final timed lap, a moment which saw him slide wide and use the run off area.
For the Castrol Honda team, Tiago Monteiro finished 6th fastest with team-mate and title outsider Gabriele Tarquini 8th – Pepe Oriola in the Tuenti Chevrolet Cruze splitting them in 7th. Tarquini scuppered an attempt to go faster in the closing seconds of qualifying by sliding off at Turn 3.
The front row for the 200th WTCC race is an all-BMW affair with Proteam Racing’s Mehdi Bennani sharing the front row with ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel.
Rob Huff and James Thompson finished 11th and 12th fastest and miss out on the reverse grid – Thompson only completed a single run in qualifying 2.
Qualifying one saw the fourth works Honda of Super GT regular Takuya Izawa finishing 15th fastest and top of the Jananese drivers. Izawa is also the best placed of the drivers eligible for the WTCC Asia trophy. He had been set to go faster but ran wide at the final turn on his final lap in Q1.
Having been drafted in by NIKA Racing to replace Michel Nykjær, Hiroki Yoshimoto finished 17th fastest with Masaki Kano, in for Franz Engstler in the Liqui Moly Team Engstler BMW, 21st. The final Japanese driver on the grid, Wiechers-Sport’s Yukinori Taniguchi was the slowest of the 1.6T runners having set the 24th fastest time of the session.
Jerónìmo Badaraco finished as the best of the normally aspirated runners in the session, the Macanese driver finishing 25th fastest in his Chevrolet Cruze.
Muller had now moved a further two points closer to winning the Championship with his fourth place finish in qualifying while Tarquini failed to pick up any Championship points. Muller leads the Championship by 146 points with 160 available.
Warm up is at 08.50 JST, 12.50 am BST, 01.50 CEST ahead of round 19 at 14.35 JST, 06.35 BST, 07.35 CEST.