Rickard Rydell on Imola pole position

The Swede Rickard Rydell claimed pole position at Imola, beating his team mate Yvan Muller with less than one tenth.
“I am very pleased with the pole position, and it has been our best session of qualifying. It was great to be able for my team mate and I to work together on this lap to get the pole,” said Rydell.

“We used the slipstream to get the two good laps, as did many of the other teams. We have found that being strong in qualifying doesn’t necessarily mean we will be strong in the race. It will be tough for us but we hope to do well.“

Team mate Muller held pole position earlier but was beaten in the closing stages of the session.

“It is very important for me to start on the front row tomorrow in terms of the Championship. I am really delighted with the position. We were able to find the pace and it worked well for us. I lost pole to Rickard by less than a tenth of a second, so I really cannot say why. Maybe I made a little mistake somewhere, but only telemetry will tell,” said Muller.

Chevrolet claimed the following two positions after a strong session. Alain Menu qualified third with his team mate Rob Huff fourth.

“I have a special car this weekend and I would like to say that it helped me! No, really it was the teamwork that helped us to get these positions. Rob (Huff) and I worked together because we want to get points for the team for the championship. It worked really well and we are very happy with the times. We have caught up a lot of the gap from SEAT and think we can be competitive tomorrow,” said Menu.

James Thompson made his best qualifying result so far this season and will start fifth in the N-Technology Honda Accord. Gabriele Tarquini, who was fastest in practice, claimed sixth ahead of Nicola Larini, Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus and Andy Priaulx.