Gabriele Tarquini on pole in Porto

SEAT’s Gabriele Tarquini topped the times for the first time this weekend to put his Leon TDI on pole position ahead of Robert Huff and Yvan Muller. Tarquini’s time of 2:09.308 gave him an advantage of just under a tenth of a second from Huff, who had set the pace in final practice, earlier on in the day.

With the previous three practice sessions having been dominated by the Chevrolet’s and Augusto Farfus’ BMW, the SEATs hit the front when it mattered in qualifying, with championship leader Yvan Muller and Tarquini leading the way in the first 30 minutes of the session.

Come the second, shorter qualifying session, Huff managed to split the two leading drivers in the WTCC title battle and earn a front row starting slot for his Cruze for Sunday’s opening race.

Andy Priaulx was the lead BMW driver in fourth, almost two tenths slower than Tarquini, with Alain Menu and local hero Tiago Monteiro taking fifth and sixth on the grid.

The second 320si of Farfus was up next, with Nicola Larini’s Chevrolet in eighth and the SEAT pairing of Jordi Gene and Rickard Rydell rounding out the top ten.

The BMW’s of Alessandro Zanardi and Jörg Müller just missed out on the second qualifying session, finishing eleventh and twelfth, with leading Independent Tom Coronel one place behind them.

Further back, James Thompson qualified 22nd, an improvement on one place from his position in practice as he also narrowed the gap between his Lada Priora and the front to under five seconds, but still over a second slower than teammate Jaap van Lagen’s Lada 110.