Photo: WTCC Media

Thed Björk fastest for Volvo in FP1 at Shanghai

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2013 Scandinavian Touring Car champion Thed Björk set the pace in the Saturday morning free practice session at the Shanghai International Circuit, leading the Honda of Gabriele Tarquini by over half a second.

Björk, making his World Touring Car Championship debut this weekend, set a time of 1:55.382 early in the session, later improving it to 1:55.323 which no one came near, with the Volvo C30 DRIVe particularly strong in the second sector.

The Swedish driver has the benefit of all new tyres for this weekend having not competed before this season, which would have aided the Volvo’s pace.

Second fastest was Gabriele Tarquini’s Honda, just ahead of the only other Swedish driver in the field, the Nika Racing Chevrolet Cruze of Rickard Rydell. Rydell who just under a tenth of a second faster than the RML Chevrolet of this year’s champion elect Yvan Muller.

Tom Coronel was the best placed of the BMW drivers for ROAL Motorsport in sixth, just ahead of the Wiechers-Sport BMW of Fredy Barth, who was also the fastest of the Yokohama Drivers’ Trophy competitors.

James Thompson was again in the top ten in the Lada Granta, setting the ninth fastest time and the first driver outside of a second of Björk’s pace. 2012 champion Rob Huff was the quickest of the SEATs in 11th, while Yukinori Taniguchi was the top Eurosport Asia Trophy competitor in 24th competing in the Campos Racing SEAT.

Mehdi Bennani, who missed all the running in the 30 minute test session on Friday, took part in the session albeit joining almost half way through and only set six laps. There were problems however for Pepe Oriola for Tuenti Racing Team, which saw the Spaniard not set any timed laps in the session in his Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T.

The session was incident free, with just minor spins for Mak Ka Lok’s RPM Racing BMW 320si and the Honda of Zengõ Motorsport driver Norbert Michelisz at Turn 14.

The next free practice session takes place at 11:10 CST.