Gabriele Tarquini topped the second free practice session ahead of qualifying for rounds three and four of the World Touring Car Championship at Valencia, where the top seven drivers being covered by two tenths of a second.
Click here for the full second practice times.
Second and third were the Chevrolet duo of Rob Huff and Yvan Muller, while top BMW was the ROAL Motorsport car of Tom Coronel – the Dutchman had led the way for the majority of the session, before Huff bettered his time with nine minutes to go.
Alain Menu made it three Chevrolets inside the top five having set the fifth fastest time while the top Yokohama Independent runner was Tarquini’s Lukoil Racing Team team-mate Alexsei Dudukalo.
The top ten was completed by Zengo Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz, Darryl O’Young, Tiago Monteiro and Pepe Oriola. Both Michelisz and O’Young had been inside the top four in the early stages. The gap between Tarquini and Oriola in tenth at the end of the session was 0.657s.
Tom Boardman, making his first appearance of the 2012 WTCC finished the session thirteenth fastest, despite having the turbo diesel engine in his Special Tuning Racing SEAT Leon.
The Ford duo from Team Aon finished fifteenth and sixteenth, with James Nash 0.011s ahead of team-mate Tom Chilton. Both the Team Aon driver’s were within 1.2s of the ultimate pace, with Nash setting a 1m45.009s and Chilton a 1m45.020s.
Mehdi Bennani and Charles Kaki Ng both saw their sessions ended early – for Bennani, he ended up in the gravel just after the half way point of the session while Ng was black flagged. Bennani finished the session eighteenth fastest having completed four laps.
A number of drivers were warned about cutting the first corner in the session, and half of the field at some stage had a drift or two, either at turn one or turn twelve, which led to some exciting moments during the session.