Photo: WTCC Media

Gabriele Tarquini leads Zolder Friday test

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SUNRED driver Gabriele Tarquini was fastest in the 30 minute test session at Zolder in his SEAT León TDI, ahead of Brazil race two winner Alain Menu.

The session was cut slightly short due to the DeTeam KK Motorsport BMW 320 TC of Marchy Lee stopping on circuit with a throttle issue.

Tarquini set the fastest time of 1:39.726, which was 1.5 seconds down on his pole position time from last year. Behind him were four 1.6 litre turbo cars with the two Chevrolets of Alain Menu and Rob Huff next up ahead of the BMW of Tom Coronel, then Yvan Muller’s Chevrolet in fifth.

Michel Nykjaer was the fastest classfied independent in sixth place, and also the top of the Jay-Ten class cars.

The Bamboo Engineering team’s drivers Darryl O’Young and Yukinori Taniguchi were ninth and 19th respectively with their first run in the new Cruze 1.6T.

Norbert Michelisz was 16th fastest in his first appearance with the new BMW 320 TC for Zengo Motorsport, with Wiechers-Sport driver Urs Sonderegger in 20th place.