The Chevrolet Cruze cars completed a clean sweep in todays qualifying at Curitiba. As it was expected Yvan Muller, Alain Menu and Rob Huff monopolized the top three positions, and Michel Nykjær provided the icing on the cake grabbing fourth place on his WTCC comeback.
Just like he had done in the two free practice sessions, Muller was able to go faster than his two team-mates and claimed his third pole position of the season.
Called in at the last minute to replace Pasquale Di Sabatino at bamboo-engineering, Nykjær cproved that he still knows how to be competitive in the WTCC and stole fourth position from Gabriele Tarquini with an impressive last lap in Q2.
For the whole day Tarquini had tried to chase the Chevrolet trio. However, the Italian driver spoiled his first lap in Q2 by driving too wide at the last turn and had to pit for new tyres. This might have jeopardized his chances of achieving a better result than fifth, just ahead of Alex MacDowall and Darryl OYoung.
None of the BMW drivers was ever able to fight for top positions, but eventually Norbert Michelisz and Tom Coronel qualified tenth and ninth, meaning a full BMW front row on the reversed grid for Race 2.
Autódromo Internacional de Curitiba – 20 / 22 July 2012
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